Ireland's fishing crisis: 'I will not take part in the scrapping of perfectly good boats'

For the past 18 years, he has run one of Ireland’s few dry docks.

Built from scratch on Bere Island where he was born and bred, he “begged, borrowed” the €3m it cost to build it.

Over the years since, he has built up a customer base that sees him booked out in advance for about six to eight months.

“The instant the Government announced the decommissioning scheme, we had four boats that had been booked in to get work done and they pulled out,” he said.

“We are just one of many businesses that are affected, and it’s the knock-on effects that people don’t see.

For every one of those fishing boats that gets decommissioned, there are not just the crews that are affected, but there are the welders, the pointers, the electricians.”

Asked if he is worried about the future, he replies: “Yes — and no.

“No, because the Bere Island Boat Yard is paid for and we are very well established, and we have up to 40 regular customers who come to us every year. In time, maybe we will just have to diversify.

“I come from a background where my father, Jack, had to fight for his own industry, which was farming. So I was brought up with an inherent survival instinct.

“But I do worry that if you keep reducing the amount of boats in the Irish fishing fleet, it just erodes the viability of the industry.

“Last year, we lost one month of work just like that. These four fellas had booked in with us but when the decommissioning came in, they cancelled.

“They are all men who are after getting hammered so much over the last number of years, they are just sick of it. They have had enough and they are getting out.”

He is appalled that those who get accepted onto the decommissioning scheme have to scrap their boats.

He is also going to refuse to scrap anybody’s boats for them.

“It’s another disgrace. Everyone talks about green this and green that, and recycling and circular economies etc.

“What is the Government doing with the boats, many of which are perfectly good boats?

“We are scrapping them. It makes no sense at all and yet someone has decided to do it.

“I absolutely will not be part of the cutting up of these boats and that’s solely on a point of principle.

“I think it is disgraceful and I want no part of that.”

While he is confident about the survival of his own business, he knows he could never have set it up in today’s climate of uncertainty sweeping through the Irish fishing industry.

However, he also worries about the country’s relationship with an abundant resource on our own doorstep and with the fishing industry that has been built up from it since the 1950s and 1960s.

We, as a people, have little or no appreciation for our marine economy here.

“Despite us being an island nation, surrounded by water, the understanding and the appreciation is not really there.

“If we don’t stop this industry going backwards, we are actually in danger of wiping it out.”

While he and so many others have long recognised the national “sea blindness”, he also thinks fishermen themselves have to take their share of the blame.

A farmer’s son himself and one who admits he was not very good at farming, he said: “If you look at the fortunes of farmers and the fortunes of fishermen, one of the biggest differences has always been that farmers have always been more organised.

“They were organised before they went into the EU and they have been organised ever since but the fishermen weren’t.”