Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)

Ireland is an island nation with a proud maritime tradition. Our coastal communities, fishing harbours and seafaring people have long sustained the life of this country in hard times and in a good. For too long, the fishing and seafood industry has been treated as an afterthought, a bargaining chip in European negotiations and a casualty of short-termism at home.

Across every coastal county from Louth to Donegal, down to Waterford and Cork, fishers and processors now face the perfect storm of quota cuts, rising costs, loss of traditional fishing grounds and continued overfishing by external states. The result is a crisis or, more accurately, an emergency. Earlier this year, Deputy Mac Lochlainn and I published a survey of Irish fishers. Its findings were stark. Some 98% do not believe the Government is protecting the industry or has its back. The survey also found that 91% believed that, without a radical change in direction, it would not survive the next three to five years.

While this debate is welcome and I commend Deputy Mac Lochlainn on seeking it, it is long overdue. The collapse in mackerel stocks has simply exposed a decline that was already well underway. We now need to move beyond tea and sympathy and towards a national strategy that is ambitious, assertive and unapologetic in its defence of Ireland's national interests.

Tá earnáil iascaireachta na hÉireann i ngéarchéim. Tá iascairí agus pobal cósta faoi bhrú de bharr laghduithe ar chuótaí, costais arda agus ró-iascaireacht ó thíortha eile, an Iorua, an Íoslainn agus na hOileáin Fharó san áireamh. Éilíonn Sinn Féin go gcuirfear straitéis náisiúnta láidir le chéile a chosnóidh ár gcuid acmhainní, a neartóidh calafoirt agus a thabharfaidh tacaíocht cheart d’iascairí cladaigh. Caithfidh Éire seasamh suas ar son a cuid pobal cósta san Aontas Eorpach.

For decades, successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments have gone to Brussels to manage, not to lead, and to accommodate, not to assert. The results of that failure speak for themselves. Ireland controls 12% of EU waters, yet receives less than 6% of total EU quotas. Since Brexit, that imbalance has worsened, with about 40% of the quota value transferred from Britain coming from stocks historically caught by Irish vessels. The Brexit deal was catastrophic. The decision earlier this year to extend it to 2038 brought certainty, but it is the certainty of collapse and catastrophe. We need a fundamental reset and radical new approach that recognises the strategic, economic and cultural importance of fisheries to our coastal regions. That means pressing the European Commission and Council for an urgent review of quota allocations, building the Department's capacity to fight our corner, including through the office mentioned by Deputy Mac Lochlainn in Brussels, and reforming the Department of the marine and Bord Iascaigh Mhara, BIM. It would be great if we had someone with a background in the fishing industry appointed as the new chief executive of BIM. I ask the Minister of State to reflect on that and consider it as he looks towards the appointment of a chief executive.

We now have a Committee on Fisheries and Maritime Affairs. As Chair, I want the committee to be active and assertive, give voice to coastal communities, hold the Government to account, propose policy innovations, where appropriate, and demand delivery for the Irish fishing industry.

Our inshore fisheries have been mentioned. They are the beating heart of Ireland's coastal communities. Small family-owned vessels sustain employment and tradition in areas with few alternatives, yet they are too often forgotten about. When they are at the forefront of the minds of the State, it often seems that it is with a view to criminalising or penalising them for simply carrying out their work. With almost 2,000 vessels, the inshore fleet provides over half of all seafood employment but receives only a fraction of supports and quota access. Most are confined to shellfish like crab, lobster and shrimp and young people face major barriers, limited licences, tiny quotas and high costs. The next generation is being driven out. They do not want to take over the boats and they do not want to enter the industry. We need a fairer allocation of a national quota to support small-scale sustainable fisheries. We need targeted investment in coastal infrastructure processing capacity and proper implementation of the Irish inshore fishery sector strategy, backed by real funding and continuity grants to keep small operators afloat. If we value our coastal communities, we must value our fishers and inshore sector not as an afterthought, but as the cornerstone of our rural and regional economy.

Harbour infrastructure, a topic the Minister of State and I have discussed at length, is the backbone of our fishing economy, yet across the country, in particular Waterford, it is crying out for investment. In the quay in Helvick, dredging has been identified as a dire need by local fishers, the local authority and, indeed, those who volunteer to save lives at sea. Progress has stalled for want of State funding. The local authority harbours programme is dysfunctional. I do not think it is fit for purpose. It is inadequate. I said this yesterday at a committee meeting and I will continue to say it. It will not fund the engineering or environmental studies needed to reach a shovel-ready stage. That is its intrinsic failure and must change.

The quay at Helvick and other local authority harbours are vital infrastructure. We acknowledge and accept that they belong to the local authority, but that does not give the Government, Department or Minister of State for fisheries the ability to say that it is not part of the responsibility of the State. In Dunmore East, one of the State's six designated fishery harbour centres and the most important fishing port in the south east, serving the east coast, north and south, critical safety works remain underfunded. Fishers have raised real concerns about berthing safety, quay conditions and overcrowding in the harbour. The promised capital works have yet to materialise and we need immediate approval and funding for the Dunmore East capital programme. That would include dredging, quay realignment and safety upgrades. It is not just a Waterford issue, as I said. This is about protecting lives, jobs and the long-term viability of one of Ireland's major fisheries ports.

Ireland's offshore fleet in ports like Dunmore East, Castletownbere and Howth are central to our seafood economy, supporting hundreds of jobs in fishing, processing, engineering and exports, yet our fleets are allowed to catch less fish in our own waters than ever before. Under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, Ireland has been a soft touch in quota talks. Time and again, our share has been traded away in favour of stronger member states who negotiate harder in their own countries' interests. That must end. We must demand fair and equitable access to fish stocks in Irish waters.

We need to rebuild pelagic and demersal fleets. We need to secure a fair quota of prawns in the Irish Sea. We need to ensure access to finance for vessel modernisation and keep value-added processing in Ireland. The Common Fisheries Policy has failed our coastal communities. It rewards those who overfish and punishes those who act responsibly. Sinn Féin will press for reform that puts sustainability, fairness and Ireland's national interest at its core.

Nowhere is that failure clearer than in the mackerel and wider pelagic fishery. Scientific advice for 2026 recommends a 70% cut to the EU mackerel quota and a 41% cut to blue whiting, not to forget boarfish. These drastic reductions are not caused by Irish mismanagement, as my colleagues have said. They are a result of rampant overfishing by third countries, in particular Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, which are, of course, under Danish sovereignty and, therefore, I thought would have been part of the European Union. This activity has often been aided by EU-based companies using those flags. That is not to let the Russian Federation and Britain off the hook for their gross overfishing in the North Atlantic.

The European Commission has known about this for years. We and others, including industry and environmental groups, have raised this. More than a million tonnes of mackerel have been caught above scientific advice in the past five years. Instead of sanctioning offenders, the EU has rewarded them with access to western waters, or is certainly proposing to do so. This has plunged Ireland's pelagic sector into crisis, in particular Donegal, but across the coast. Our entire seafood economy is looking at losses that could exceed €200 million next year. We need an emergency survival fund now. As has been noted by the Minister of State and my colleague, Deputy Mac Lochlainn, fishers do not want handouts or a bailout, but they need that as this crisis will affect them.

The EU must act decisively to end this reckless overfishing. The Government must demand sanctions and compensation and show leadership. It is indefensible that Irish fishers follow the rules and face ruin while others profit with the consent of their governments and the silence and acquiescence, if we are being honest, of Brussels. The mackerel issue is a test of whether Ireland has any real influence in Europe and we cannot afford another year of hand-wringing.

In a few weeks, the Minister of State will be in Brussels with the Council of Ministers to set the 2026 quotas. Expectations in the industry are not high or buoyant at the moment because of the crisis, but there is a weight of expectation on his shoulders as he goes there because of the great urgency involved. The Minister of State must go to Brussels with a clear mandate not simply to manage, but to fight for Ireland's corner. It cannot be on his shoulders alone; it has to be on the shoulders of the Taoiseach, as Head of Government, and the Tánaiste, in his role as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade.

A failure to deliver on the reasonable demands of the Irish fishing industry would be a collective failure for the Government to assert Ireland's sovereignty in Europe. For decades, fishers have correctly believed that Irish fisheries were sacrificed to secure wins elsewhere and that must stop. The balance has to be reset. We need the Minister of State to secure a fair share of quota allocations reflecting the scale of waters, along with concrete EU actions to sanction overfishing by third countries and European corporations which operate in vessels under the flag of third countries.

We need to see funding for harbour infrastructure and fleet modernisation, and we need to see a renewed commitment to Ireland's coastal communities. Our fishing industry is not asking for favours. It is simply demanding fairness. Fishing communities have endured decades of neglect and now they need delivery. Ireland's fishing heritage, our economic potential, thousands of livelihoods and hundreds of millions of euro of economic growth are at stake here. The time for caution and niceties has passed. What we need, and what Sinn Féin will continue to demand, is action that is firm, co-ordinated and in the national interest.

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