Video: Anger and uncertainty around fishing industry in West Cork

AN air of uncertainty lingers around Castletownbere’s fishing industry.

The West Cork town synonymous with fishing has, at present, 40 vessels ed in the area - but half of the area’s boat owners have applied to get out of the industry.

When a voluntary government scheme was introduced to cut Ireland’s fishing fleet by 30%, to make the industry viable after Ireland lost a further 20% of its fishing quota in a Brexit deal, 64 vessel owners from around the Irish coast applied for what has become known in the industry as decommissioning.

Nineteen of 64 of the scheme’s applicants were ed to Castletownbere, which bills itself as the ‘fishing capital of Ireland’.

from the fishing community suggests that nobody wants to leave the industry. But decommissioning has become somewhat attractive to vessel owners with debts or to those whose children are not interested in continuing in the family business.

However, the decommissioning scheme has hit a snag.

Applicants of the scheme had expected to receive €12,000 per the amount of gross tonnage associated with their vessel size. The average compensation package was originally expected to be €1.5million, but it has recently turned out that applicants have been offered a lot less than expected.

On January 10, scheme applicants received letters with compensation offers from Bord Iascaigh Mhara. It transpired that the highest offer per gross tonne is €10,500, with some offers coming in as low as €6,000.

According to John Nolan, manager of the Castletownbere Fishermans Co-op, Fishermen who received such offers are “angry”.

“There’s a lot of anger on the ground, because a lot of the boat owners are very disillusioned with it,” he said.

“Their belief was that they were going to get €12,000 per gross tonne to give up their livelihood, for the benefit of their neighbours, so that they would be more viable.

“Some of them now have ended up getting offers as low as €6,000, and that’s after causing huge anger,” John said.

The lower than expected offers seem to have the scheme hanging in the balance.

In response, of the fishing community held a meeting in Limerick on January 1. The result of that will see the industry seeking to negotiate more money from the government.

“I attended the meeting in Limerick and the industry would like to sit down with the Taoiseach,” said John, “because the offers are such that we won’t get the 30% of the fleet decommissioning, the way things are going.

“Like a turkey voting for Christmas, I want decommissioning, but I do believe we have a duty to make sure that people who have been in this (fishing) all their life, and are taking their own boats out of the water so that there’ll be more quota left for the people that remain, are entitled to leave their industry with a bit of dignity and a few bob in their pocket,” added John.

He was part of a task force that negotiated compensation packages with the government. €12,00 per gross tonne was agreed. He returned from negotiations relaying the figure to the fishing community.

“We just don’t accept that you can take €12,000 of an offer agreed with the taskforce and turn that into €6,000,” he said

“I came back here and told people they’d be getting €12,000. That’s what we negotiated.”

The lower figures mean decommissioned fishermen stand to receive between €200,000 and €300,000 less than expected.

On top of that, decommissioning fishers who availed of the Covid-19 tie up scheme, will have to repay the funds they received as part of that initiative.

A stipulation of the scheme says that those who avail themselves of decommissioning will have to scrap their boats. Selling them on and repurposing the vessels is not an option, despite their potential to make €200,000 and upwards of over €1million in the second-hand market.

A spokesperson for BIM said: “Decommissioned vessels cannot be resold under European Union law.

“While repurposing vessels is allowed under EU legislation, the potential challenges it would create from a taxation point of view and the difficulties to monitor in practice led to a decision made at government level not to allow vessels to be repurposed”.

Eric Murphy is one of the 19 Castletownbere trawler owners who successfully applied for the scheme. On principle, he will not be accepting his offer.

“I don’t think we will be taking decommissioning for our vessel, Anders Nees,” said Eric.

“The offer we got was very disappointing to say the least.

“We would sell the boat on the open market for a similar price and the license would stay in the industry for future generations.

“It would be immoral to get rid of a good vessel, break it up and surrender her license for a few crumbs,“ he said.

One fisherman who is decommissioning two boats out of his five-vessel fleet is Tadgh Callaghan.

He said he received an offer of €8.700 per gross tonne. Though he is unhappy with his offer, he says he simply must go ahead with it and says at least a further eight out of the 19 will also continue to decommission.

“Our backs are against the wall,” said Tadgh. “We have no choice but to accept it.

“We invested in other boats. We thought decommissioning would be announced sooner, but there was a delay, so we upgraded.

“We were expecting more than €10,000 per gross tonne, but we didn’t get it. So, we basically have to go ahead with it now, no matter what we get.

“And I reckon there’ll be nine of us out of the 19 decommissioning,” he added.

Skipper and owner of the local Chandlery business Sheehan Marine, Jason Sheehan, says decommissioning is not an option for him.

“We thought long and hard about it. The timing for us wasn’t right. We’d had a lot of money put into our own family trawler. And for myself, at 35 years of age, I don’t want to leave the industry, basically.

“And I’m hoping that whoever will be left after decommissioning will have a good future ahead,” Mr. Sheehan said.

With most vessel owners unwilling to accept the offers that have been made to them, the danger is that the scheme may not achieve its primary objective, which is to make what remains of Ireland’s fishing industry more viable.

In response to the claims over the compensation package, BIM said: “The €12,000 per gross tonne is the gross amount, subject to depreciation as per EU rules.”

Regarding the differentials in price, Bim said: “Part of the payment comprises a ‘catch sum’ of up to €8,400 per gross tonne for quota species covered under the UK/EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).

“This is calculated by indexing total vessel landings of quota stocks against the maximum total vessels’ landings of quota stocks within different fleet segment.

“The offer reflects the level of catches of quota species for the applicant vessel, varying from vessel to vessel.”