On a cold November morning, Killybegs in Co Donegal is quiet, except for jackhammers operating in the local hotel by the seafront and the refurbishment of a visitor centre at the harbour.
A helicopter appears regularly in the sky overhead, bringing supplies to offshore salmon farms in Donegal Bay.
This should be the busiest time of year. Pelagic fish, the species found near the surface of the ocean, are most plentiful in the North Atlantic from late autumn to early summer. The season peaks either side of Christmas, but every fishing vessel is tied up at the pier.
Local fisherman Denis Carbery landed 1,100 tonnes of mackerel last month from his trawler, Lauren, and that was it for the year; he will not take to sea again until January.
Locals have exceeded their fishing quota of pelagic fish – mackerel, horse mackerel, herring and blue whiting. The only boats landing in Killybegs harbour are foreign vessels.
Carbery remembers a time when 3,000 people worked in Killybegs. They came from as far away as Glencolmcille and Bundoran, elsewhere in the county, to work. The town is built around the fishing industry – not just the trawlers and their crew, but processing factories, engineering factories and net factories.
“When I started fishing first, we were fishing 11 months of the year. Everybody came here to work. The town was booming,” he said.
His daughter is in Australia, as is a nephew and niece. He talks about young people emigrating from the area as if it was the 1980s in Ireland.
At the root of the problem is the Common Fisheries Policy. Ireland has 12 per cent of the EU fishing waters and just 5.6 per cent of EU fishing quotas. As part of the Brexit deal, 26 per cent of the Irish mackerel quota was given to the British. “That’s 26 per cent of our income,” he said.
“I won’t be voting for him,” says Carbery of Fianna Fáil’s Charlie McConalogue, the Minister with responsibility for fisheries, who is from Donegal. “Fianna Fáil’s track record is giving away everything.”
He despairs at how little coverage is given to the plight of the State’s fishermen.
“We are too far away from Dublin, that’s the biggest problem. Politicians don’t honestly believe we are living on an island, and the media don’t want to report on it,” he says.
The Donegal constituency also includes outgoing Sinn Féin TD Pádraig Mac Lochlainn, the party’s spokesperson on fishing.
Charlie Doherty’s fishing vessel Áine has not gone to sea since March because of quotas. It’s an impressive vessel, just seven years old.
Doherty is scathing of all the political parties, wondering why there are no Irish MEPs on the EU fisheries committee while Hungary, a landlocked country, has representatives on it.
“The renegotiation of Brexit is due to take place in 2026. We are an island nation in the North Atlantic with no member on the fisheries committee. You’d think the sitting Minister would ensure that one of his MEPs is on it. If they couldn’t be bothered, that’s what they think of the fishing really,” he said.
“My honest view is that in the lead up to the last election, there were different parties going to do this and that. The proof is in the quota we have. It is reducing year on year.”
He says he doesn’t see anything in the manifestos of the parties for fishing.
“They know what needs to be done. The problems don’t change; they just get worse. Charlie McConalogue knows the problems. He’s been in four years,” said Doherty.
[ The overfishing issue that persists despite pledges to support sustainable seasOpens in new window ]
“We need the EU to stand up to the Nordic nations, but the EU won’t stand up to them unless the country that is affected the worse – Ireland – puts the pressure on them. We are the fish basket of Europe, yet we’re the poor relation.”
Last year, Greencastle fisherman Cara Rawdon decommissioned his fishing vessel and retired after 46 years under the Brexit Permanent Cessation Scheme, which sought to take 60 vessels out of Irish waters.
Morale, he says, is at an “all-time low” in the fishing industry. Bureaucracy is increasing, and fishermen are in a “constant battle to stay the right side of the law”.
He is more forgiving of Mr McConalogue, who he believes “means well”, but says he is up against countries much bigger and more powerful than Ireland who covet the country’s fishing stock.
Ireland, he believes, is only one voice of many in Brussels, and has to make its accommodations.
“Our fishing rights is selling off the family silver,” he said. “It’s been bartered off for something else.”
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