The Killybegs Fishermen’s Organisation have said their members and the wider fishing industry are in a heightened state of anxiety about what the UK’s next steps might be with Brexit.
Responding to last night’s developments in the House of Commons, Killybegs Fishermen’s Organisation CEO, Seán O’Donoghue said the current situation was ‘playing politics with the livelihoods of Irish fishermen’.
MPs rejected Theresa May’s Brexit deal for a second time to prompt further instability at Westminster and uncertainty over the UK’s departure from the EU.
The prime minister saw 391 MPs vote against her withdrawal agreement on Tuesday, with 242 voting in favour.
With uncertainty deepening and only 16 days remaining until the UK is due to leave the European Union, O’Donoghue insists that answers must now be forthcoming.
“We’ve been beating this drum for a long time in stating that the seafood and fishing industries are uniquely exposed given the sharing of fishing grounds with the UK,’ he said.
“The Department of the Taoiseach reiterated last night that all of the important commercial fish stocks which we rely on are shared with the UK and approximately one third of all landings of fish by Irish vessels come from UK waters.
“An orderly Brexit is imperative, otherwise we face chaos and conflict on the high seas in the very near future not to mention the major conflict issues around exports and landings.
“We cannot countenance this happening and in the event of ‘no-deal Brexit’, we must at a minimum, maintain the existing access and quota sharing arrangements until the end of 2019 as covered in the recent Commission’s proposal,” O’Donoghue added.
“Whereas fish are mobile and know no borders nor bear any nationality, our trawlers don’t have this luxury and must obey boundaries and exclusion zones.
“Our industry is standing on the edge of a precipice and everything that we have strived for and developed for generations is staring into the abyss
“We’ve worked tirelessly on this for almost two years, we’ve achieved a great deal in terms of commitments in both the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration only to be now faced with this latest shambles in Westminster,” he said.
“The situation is much too serious to be playing politics with the livelihoods of Irish fishermen.”
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