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

This has to be the moment where everything changes. This has to be a radical reset of the operation of the Common Fisheries Policy. The policy talks about climate change, sustainability and those communities closest to fisheries benefiting from them. We need to expose how all of that amounts to nothing. This is apparently four times worse than what happened to us after Brexit. Brexit was an absolute disaster for our fishing communities. That is why the Brexit adjustment reserve fund was put in place. We are going to need to fight for the maximum amount of fish but we also need to look at the whole Common Fisheries Policy and this relative stability whereby it stays the same every year and nothing changes. People are looking at our waters and we are just not getting our fair share of fish. There has to be a reaction to deal with the utter failure of the European Commission to deal with some of those most reckless actions in the history of fishing. It is unbelievably stupid and self-defeating to wreck a precious fishery like mackerel, which belongs to all of us, from the spawning grounds off the west of Ireland right up those Atlantic coasts. The level of greed and recklessness is off the scale. They have to pay a price. It has to stop. This has to lead to a change in our approach to the whole issue of the Common Fisheries Policy.

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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