As you will have seen, a Spanish-owned trawler called the Fastnet ran aground off Dingle last weekend, and fourteen crew members were winched to safety by the Irish Coast Guard helicopter. The 28-metre vessel had suffered engine failure shortly after leaving the harbour and drifted onto rocks near Binn Bán beach. The crew are all safe, thankfully. There are now concerns about diesel from the ship’s tanks, which were full for a two-week trip.

It comes in the same week that EU member states agreed fishing quotas for next year that the industry here is calling ‘catastrophic.’

Ireland is facing a 70% cut to mackerel, 41% to blue whiting, and the blocking of the Hague preferences, a protection mechanism in place since 1976. The Seafood Ireland Alliance says 2,300 jobs in coastal communities are now at risk. One vessel owner in Killybegs says he’ll have about 14 to 20 days at sea in 2026.

Meanwhile, down in Skibbereen, the Fresh Fish Deli has recently closed with the loss of 30 jobs, with EU fishing policy blamed for the lack of supply.

There’s something fitting about a trawler named Fastnet coming to grief off the Kerry coast in a week like this. That rock has been a marker of danger and homecoming for centuries, the last light fishermen see heading out and the first they look for coming back.

The Atlantic doesn’t care what your boat is called or what flag you’re flying. And neither, it seems, does Brussels.

Christmas culture wars

Culture wars have finally come for Dublin’s Winter Lights festival, and I have to say it’s been a long time coming. The city council has been running the thing since 2018, calling it Winter Lights for seven whole years, and nobody batted an eyelid.

We’ve been there a few times and the kids have loved it. But now, thanks to the miracle of Elon Musk’s algorithm, we’ve discovered that this is actually evidence of ‘aggressive secularism’ and a globalist plot to cancel Christmas.

Peadar Tóibín was among those triggered, complaining that it should be called Christmas lights and warning of dark forces seeking to dilute the true meaning of Christmas. This is only a few weeks after Catherine Connolly had to swear an oath of office ‘in the presence of Almighty God.’

The whole thing has echoes of the great American tradition of the War on Christmas, which has been running for about twenty years now despite Christmas remaining stubbornly uncancelled.

Over there, tech billionaire Peter Thiel has been touring the lecture circuit warning about the Antichrist. His candidate for the role is usually Greta Thunberg. Thiel, for context, co-founded Palantir, the surveillance system used by US Immigration to track down migrants, and has bankrolled JD Vance’s political career.

As Roy Keane might say: what a bunch of big babies.

Ireland’s dead and gone (?)

Speaking of defending authentic Ireland, there was an extraordinary interview on the Irish Times’ Inside Politics podcast this week. Hugh Linehan sat down with Eoin Lenihan (no relation) to discuss his bestselling book Vandalising Ireland, which argues that successive governments, NGOs, and the media have conspired to strip the country of its identity and replace it with a globalised, multicultural society. It’s been a big seller on Amazon even though traditional bookshops have mostly refused to stock it.

Eoin Lenihan is the son of Eddie Lenihan, the great Clare seanchaí who has spent his life preserving Irish folklore and fairy stories. Eddie famously stopped a motorway being built through a fairy bush in Clare back in 1999, and has recorded hundreds of hours of oral tradition from elderly storytellers across the country. And now the son of one of Ireland’s greatest living folklorists is writing a book about how Ireland isn’t Irish enough anymore. Yikes.The interview did not go well. When Linehan started asking about Lenihan’s background, including an old satirical Twitter persona called ‘Progdad,’ things got heated. It really kicks off around the half-hour mark, if you fancy a listen. What a mad world we live in.

30 Acres

Finally, a quick plug. Our mockumentary podcast 30 Acres is out now on RTÉ Radio 1 and wherever you get your podcasts. It’s a spoof documentary about a small community fighting vulture funds in a ghost estate, featuring brilliant improvisations from John Colleary, Stefanie Preissner, Barry Murphy and Philippa Dunne. We recorded it back in 2019 and it’s only coming out now, which tells you something about the pace of things in Montrose.

In making 30 Acres, we borrowed heavily from Rob Reiner’s semi-improvised style, letting great actors riff on a loose outline rather than scripting every line. Reiner was a master of that approach, from This Is Spinal Tap through to When Harry Met Sally. His death this week, alongside his wife Michele, allegedly at the hands of their own son, is a tragedy. Trump’s pathetic, ill-timed rebuke of Reiner in the hours following his death was hardly surprising, but still breathtaking.

Reiner was 78, still working, having just released Spinal Tap II in September. Thanks for all the laughs, Rob.