Inland and Marine Fisheries: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-04 ============================================================ Noel O'Donovan (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach I want to make a couple of brief points and will try not to repeat a lot of what has been said already. I welcome the debate on the fishing sector. Any discussion about fishing and supporting our communities across the nation that need a strong fishing sector is a welcome debate. I want to genuinely thank the Minister of State for his engagement with the sector over the Christmas period. He travelled to Castletownbere and Killybegs. As I have said time after time, engaging and listening is the most important thing that we do and the actions of the Minister of State were well respected by the community in Castletownbere. He took on board some of the basic suggestions made. It is to be hoped those will feed into the new fishing group that is being set up. I do not find myself agreeing with Sinn Féin a lot of the time, but my colleague, Senator Andrews, has expressed how we all feel about the sector and what needs to happen. Before Christmas, I spoke after the December Fisheries Council about the European process, explaining how I considered myself to be a proud European but also how we felt we were betrayed by Europe. I do not think we can lose sight of that fact. I have a couple of opinions and questions. I raised the legal opinion at a committee before Christmas. Have we received a response to a legal opinion on challenging the non-acceptance of the Hague preferences? It is a real change in how Europe treats this country and small nations. I am not questioning the European process, but European leaders have to question their processes and how they treat small countries. There has been a reaction on social media and the dangers of protests across Europe because a European process is not listening well enough. Do we have movement on the legal opinion? Senator Boyle explained how the Nordic countries were increasing their total allowable catch in terms of mackerel. I welcome the conversation the Minister of State had with the Commission on that last week. What does he feel is the Commission's view on this? There are technical discussions going on, but will they stand up? This is an opportunity. The Nordic countries can be blamed for overfishing, but this is an opportunity to move from blame to agreement where we can all fish waters and achieve a fair catch. That is where I would like to see the conversation moved to. Rather than blaming Nordic countries, we could instead have an agreement. I ask for a clear statement on whether the Commission has views on that. The timing is imminent. Mackerel stocks are in this country at the start of the year. Timing for the Irish sector is important and we need agreement on that. I ask for an answer on that. I welcome the announcement that the group will be set up in February. It is important that the terms of reference be broad. We are at a crossroads in terms of the fishing sector. We cannot go backwards, but we can move forward. We have a generational opportunity to change our fishing communities for inshore and offshore. It is important that this can bring about change in terms of stabilisation funding for our inshore fishermen and support for our pelagic fishers who are suffering losses. We have to support the net and boat builders in our communities. We have a generational opportunity to sort out the fishing sector. All of us, including the Department and Governments, have blame for why we are here, but we can move forward together by listening, engaging, putting the proper financial supports in place and making policy changes that are required. Some will say that the Minister of State has been dealt a hard hand and has a difficult task, but he has a golden opportunity. I genuinely wish him well. He has to do well for the communities we represent. There have been various documentaries on the fisheries sector, which includes trawler workers and the dangers, threats and loss of life faced by people who work in the industry. We owe it to the industry to address the issues. I have said a few times that we need to grasp this opportunity. The timeline of the working group is important and I ask for an indication as to what it will be. There is an immediate financial ask because factories do not have fish and boats cannot go out. There have been and will be further job losses, so the timeline is important. I again wish the Minister of State well in his work. --- 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/seanad/2026-02-04/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:35+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-04