Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

The difficulty is that there are corporations based in the European Union that have invested in the fleets in Iceland and the Faroe Islands that have been recklessly overfishing. My concern is that there has been a lack of political will as a result of their lobbying skills over the last number of years. We have been watching this slow-moving car crash. Mackerel is a precious species. It is a migratory species. It spawns off the west coast of Ireland and works its way up to those northern waters. To see it recklessly overfished to the point where we could lose it very soon is utterly heartbreaking. There are hard-working people who took chances in this country and who built up a pelagic industry, and they have been betrayed by this failure to deal with this issue. This is a matter of great urgency, and it goes to the heart of the need to really have a Common Fisheries Policy that is just and fair to our people.

See this speech in context