Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-12-04-Speech-3-102"
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"en.20021204.5.3-102"2
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"Mr President, what has been agreed to in relation to cod fishing in the Irish Sea will discriminate drastically against the Northern Ireland fleet. More sacrifices have been made by that fleet than any other fleet in the European Union. It has been pruned and pruned and pruned yet again. Northern Ireland fishermen more than anyone want to maintain sustainable fisheries in the Irish Sea. Cod amounts to about 10% of the value of all fish annually landed in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland fishermen are opposed to the present proposals. They are not viable as an economic option, either for fishermen whose assets are not really being fully used or for the governments who may be spending considerable amounts of money on aid without obtaining long-term change assuring a viable future for the industry. Fishermen have promoted the following as alternatives in Northern Ireland: further targeted decommissioning; real-time closures; additional technical conservation measures.
Fishermen want to work with the scientists but the scientists who advise the Commission will not work with them. I have been at a meeting where they invited the scientists to come and look at the Irish Sea and the scientists would not even come and look at it. They prepared a boat for them and they would not even go out in the boat. I say that if the scientists cannot go and argue their case in the Irish Sea then it must not be a scientific case that they are really arguing.
The chairman of the Committee on Fisheries has a proposal that would secure more money for investigating the effects of the measures already in place. That is something that is very important. We need to know if all the sacrifices that fishermen have made in the past have done anything to help the fishing industry, and the scientific evidence should be produced if they have it. This should be supported, and a proper evaluation of what has already been imposed conducted, before any new decisions are taken that will have a discriminatory effect on the Northern Ireland fishing fleet. Fears of discrimination are not myths in Northern Ireland, they are stubborn facts. We need to have a real evaluation of what success the past cuts have had and what information is available to be examined.
Northern Ireland fishermen have made great sacrifices in the past but they are now being convinced that the knife has been turned on them. For example, we have had an announcement from Dublin that there are going to be bigger, larger and better boats. There is going to be an Atlantic dream financed partly by EU aid while the fishermen in Northern Ireland are being pushed to destroy their own boats.
Finally, I would like to say that not only fishermen are going to suffer but also their wives and families will suffer and death is going to come to the fishing villages and to the hopes of the future for these people."@en1
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