Fishing Industry
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29
============================================================

Timmy Dooley (FF), Clare

I understand that the Deputy comes from an area where fishing is important. To be clear, the quota reduction, based on the scientific advice, applied across the board regardless of the member states involved. It did not seek to penalise Ireland in favour of any other state. It sought to try to protect, insofar as possible, the future of certain species. The Deputy is right in the sense that Ireland has a significant quota when it comes to species like mackerel, in particular, blue whiting and boarfish. In the case of mackerel, we have 50% of the European quota based on track record. However, stocks of that species are considerably low. The quota reduction of 70% was applied to each country in the context of its quota allocation. It would be wrong to suggest that what was done was unnecessarily discriminatory towards Ireland.
As stated, the Hague preferences have been under pressure for some time. We will seek every possible way to try to find a mechanism to have them restored in due course.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-29