IRISH FISHING WATERS ‘STOLEN’ BY EU FLEETS
Boats only get 15% haul and face wide ban
IRISH fishing waters have effectively been stolen by the rest of the EU fishing fleet, shock figures revealed last night.
The country’s fleet now faces annihilation and is also banned from fishing in any other European waters.
Irish fishermen under the EU quota system are only allowed 15% of the total fish caught in our own waters.
But the secret euro stats leaked from the Department of the Marine to industry bible the Marine Times show:
The Dutch quota allowed them to catch 105,484 tonnes of five species here
France was allowed nearly 90,000 tonnes of 13 species inside Irish waters, and
Spain boats were allowed to catch 40,000 tons of seven species.
All of these quotas are many times in excess of what the Irish fleet is allowed to catch in the Irish Sea and the Atlantic
inside our exclusive 200 mile economic zone.
But worse still Norway, which is not a full EU member, has quotas in Irish waters of 231,482 tones of blue whiting plus 14 tons of blue ling and 13 tons of Tusk. The quota table also reveals how
Irish fishermen have NO quota in French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Danish, Polish, Belgium, Latvian or Lithuanian waters.
The figures were obtained by one of the country’s top fishing experts Dr Kevin Flannery.
He told the Marine Times: “A huge Irish national resource has been annexed by the EU and acquired as a major economic asset by the rest of Europe.
“We all know Ireland got a very bad deal in the 70s and a quota deal in the 80s which was ridiculous.
“But when you look at the true figures and what is being taken from our waters by other EU fishermen, the figures are frightening.”