After our fishing, does Brussels have our farms in their sights?

Having declared for Aontú in the upcoming European elections, fisherman and lobbyist Patrick Murphy argues that when our fishing industry has been decimated by bad policy decisions, farming could be next on the EU agenda 

AS a lifelong fisherman, aquaculturist and employer within our maritime industry, I have been serving as chief executive of the Irish South & West Fish Producers Organisation in Castletownbere for seven years now.

I can truly say the efforts of our members to highlight the plight of Ireland’s seafood industry has all but consumed the organisation.

The recent CSO report showing a loss of 8% employment in our industry is a poor reflection on our government who were constantly told this was inevitable. They ignored all our proactive positive suggestions that could have turned the tide for so many fishing families, who now feel there is no future. They are leaving the industry in huge numbers through Minster McConalogue’s ‘voluntary’ decommissioning scheme.  

Our rights and our livelihoods have been slowly but systematically taken away from our fishermen and women and from our industry by unelected bureaucrats who have introduced and implemented a maze of bureaucratic regulation that is killing both our industry and our coastal communities. 

All the while they are hiding behind so-called ‘regionalisation’ and ‘public consultation’ – buzz-words to disguise the true damage being done.

Time after time, I‘ve warned that while fishing is only the first industry to face destruction – farming is next. 

The clearance of Dutch farmers from their lands should cause our entire rural and coastal communities to sit up, take notice and fight
back! 

What concerns me most is that fishermen and farmers are literally sitting on their hands as their livelihoods and futures are being demolished behind closed doors in both Dublin and Brussels. 

In May of 2021 I brought our south-western fishing fleet to Cork city’s docks to warn the public about what was happening to our industry and to our fishing communities. 

As a direct result of the success of this action, I persuaded my industry colleagues, countrywide, to bring their members to our capital city in June of 2021 where we all marched on Dáil Éireann and Seanad Eireann, both of which were sitting in the National Conference Centre on the docks at that time. 

We got three to four days of publicity from these exhibitions of the anger and frustration widely felt throughout our coastal and fishing communities at the actions of our government and the EU Council, EU Commission and EU Parliament. 

But the bureaucrats who are rarely if ever seen in public continued with their strangulation policies and my predictions about the death of our fishing industry and of our coastal communities continue to ring true. 

Plans and policies I have fought against are introduced through ever more unaccountable regulators and regulation. 

All of what I‘ve outlined above has led me to put myself forward for a different role, a role in public life on the European stage so that I can, at least, be in the room where and when these laws are made and bring first-hand knowledge of the issues facing Irish fishing and farming communities and try to stop what is happening.  

While this may be naive of me, I really can no longer stay on the outside where my voice is heard but rarely acted upon.

Current EU Laws governing both sea-fishing and farming barely protect our ways of life but both the direction in which EU regulatory frameworks point and the pace at which change is sought by vested interests
 that are already over-represented in Brussels, are accelerating and destined to destroy our traditional ways of life and our means of supporting our families and communities. 

People must look at the misinformation and the blatant lies coming from some of our media – and far too many among our political class – about what is planned in respect of the growing of food and for our Irish waters over the coming decade. 

People must also examine and scrutinise the attacks made against those who dare to say no to what is planned.

Offshore wind costs up to 10 times more to install than onshore wind turbines and guess what? It will be owned again by foreign companies – another give away, like our fish, sugar and natural gas resources of the past.

Surely it’s time to call a halt.