“We take the hit twice” – Fisherman tells EU ministers Ireland’s fleet is paying twice for a crisis it didn’t cause

Addressing EU Fisheries Ministers in Cork this week as part of Ireland’s EU Presidency discussions on generational renewal, ISEFPO CEO John Lynch delivered a blunt account of an industry caught between collapsing stocks, competition for sea space, and a Common Fisheries Policy he says was “written for yesterday.”

EU Fisheries Ministers meeting in Cork this week for talks on generational renewal in fishing and aquaculture heard a direct and personal account of the pressures facing the Irish fleet, delivered by John Lynch, CEO of the Irish South & East Fishermen’s Producer Organisation (ISEFPO).

Lynch, a fisherman for 37 years before taking up the ISEFPO role five years ago, was invited to address the gathering by the Irish Minister. He used the platform not for statistics alone, but for the story of his own family: four generations fishing out of Castletownbere and then Howth, an uncle lost at sea in 1968, and a son, Conor, who now co skippers the family boat, the Eblana.

It was Conor’s question that framed the whole speech:

“Regularly, though he asks me a question I am finding harder and harder to answer – is there a future in this?”

Fish stocks and a changing sea

Lynch did not shy away from the scale of the stock crisis in the Celtic and Irish Seas, where several stocks, including cod, now carry zero catch advice.

“In my own backyard of the Irish Sea, the fleet is left reliant on prawns to eke out a living.”

Rebuilding these stocks, he said, “cannot be done without financial support and policy change,” since fishermen “cannot self-finance the extensive rebuilding plans that are needed.”

He was equally direct about the role of climate change alongside overfishing in driving that decline, pointing to new arrivals such as anchovy, bluefin tuna and boarfish in Irish waters.

“We are now realising, and the science is realising, that stock change is also being driven fundamentally by climate change.”

He argued that fisheries policy needs to adapt fast enough to let fishermen follow the fish into new opportunities.

“Spatial squeeze” and a double hit

The second issue Lynch raised was competition for sea space from offshore renewable energy, nature restoration and marine protected areas. He was careful to say the fleet is not opposed to any of these in principle.

“We accept that offshore renewable energy must be part of the future. The argument is not whether. It is how.”

But he described a pattern of displacement with little support attached:

“Move your gear. Move your pots. Go fish somewhere else… in most cases with no meaningful impact assessment, no compensation framework, and no transition scheme of any kind.”

The cumulative effect, he argued, falls hardest on skippers already dealing with declining stocks.

“Climate change was not caused by fishermen. But the solution to climate change is being built in the ocean, and it is fishermen who are being asked to carry the cost of it.”

A Celtic Sea skipper facing shrinking quotas and displacement from remaining grounds, he said, “takes the hit twice.”

A policy that “does not hear the word common”

Lynch’s sharpest comments were reserved for the Common Fisheries Policy itself, and for the sense of broken trust he says runs through the Irish fleet. He pointed to the suspension of the Hague Preferences for 2026 for the first time since 1983, which he said turned quota reductions of 20% into real losses of 40-50% for Irish boats, and to the impact of Brexit, which “impacted Ireland the hardest.”

“When you say the words Common Fisheries Policy to an Irish fisherman, he does not hear the word common. He does not believe it was written for him, and he does not believe it works for him. Let me give you the clearest example I have of how faith in a policy breaks down in Ireland.”

“In the 1970s, Ireland entered an agreement in good faith, as part of that agreement Ireland and at the time the UK were in a process known as the Hague Preference given recognition of the particular dependence of coastal communities on fishing and the fish stocks around their coast . From the outset our industry believed that agreement meant what it said and placed their trust in a process which ensured a minimum catch for those communities.”

“However, for 2026 the Hague preferences for the first time since 1983 were not applied. This has had a devasting impact on our fishing industry with significantly reduced quotas for many species. Reductions in quotas of 20% for others, translated into losses of 40-50% for our fishermen with the loss of the Hague’s. This hurt and hurt badly”.

“This situation must be addressed in any reform of the CFP.”

He was careful to frame this as a call to fix the policy rather than abandon it, pointing to quota-sharing arrangements based on relative stability that have not changed since 1982, and to rigidities in capacity limits and the landing obligation that he said no longer match the operational reality of mixed fisheries. As an example, he cited Rockall, where scientific advice allows 23,000 tonnes of haddock but only 9 tonnes of cod bycatch.

“This is an absurd situation.”

“For many fishermen the CFP was written for yesterday,” Lynch told ministers. “It must become a document written for tomorrow.”

A question for ministers

Lynch closed by turning the question back on the room, asking ministers to define what kind of fishing industry Europe actually wants in ten years’ time.

“What size, what scale, based in which communities, landing into which ports? What is the plan? Nobody has answered those questions.”

He returned finally to his son. Conor, he said, has already chosen to fish for a living, but is weighing whether to invest in a boat of his own.

“He will only do that if somebody can show him a return at the end of it. I cannot show him one. That is the plain truth of it.”

Lynch left ministers with a final challenge:

“Ministers, there will always be fish in the ocean. Our job, all of us in this room, is to agree how we manage it, and to make sure that the communities who have fished it for generations are still there when we do.”