Fishing Industry
Dail Éireann — 2025-10-14
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Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (SF), Donegal

As he was coming before the committee, the Minister of State will not have had a chance to hear the contributions from the fish producer organisations and the representative of the Irish Fish Processors and Exporters Association. In all of my time, I have never seen it worse. I have been in politics for 23.5 years, representing the fishing communities around me. In all those years, I have never seen a worse situation presented. The term "economic Armageddon" was used today. Every single witness said this is the worst scenario they could ever have thought of. Why is that? Over 1 million tonnes - I had to read that again to make sure I was right - of mackerel above what was recommended in the scientific advice have been caught. Unbelievable recklessness and greed have led us to this. It has to stop. Those parties, whether corporations based in the European Union or in other countries, have to stop. They have to pay a price and we need to find a solution to save our industry.

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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/2025-10-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:04+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-10-14