Gannetsway Report, September 08.

Staunchly combating, as one must, the tendency of the passing years to make one angry and cantankerous, I ration my comments on the Irish fishing industry fairly strictly. What’s more, after the bad weather of July and August, I had hoped for a fine September that would yield some tuna trips, which I would far rather be writing about now. However, at the same time as last year’s trip, with yet another Atlantic depression bucketing rain upon us, I found myself heading for a Terra Madre conference at the Waterford Institute of Technology, on The Future of Sustainable Food Production in Ireland, andsub-titled A Brighter Future for Ireland’s Food Producers.

Rather than send the participants across the campus to the auditorium in the pouring rain, as we finished our nice breakfast rolls and coffee, the organisers had the bright idea of opening the conference in the hall where we already were. The only trouble was that it had no loudspeakers and lousy acoustics, not to mention the absence of seats. Darina Allen bravely said her bit, and introduced the founder of Terra Madre, Carlo Petrini. He proceeded to address us at considerable length in Italian, with suitable passion, his radical ideas very ably translated by a dashing young woman, whose voice however was by no means strong enough to overcome the hubbub of conversation from the lobby at the other end of the hall.

Very well, we proceeded to our workshops, in my case on sea fishing. Two industry stalwarts were already installed as chair and spokesman. The suits were in the front row, and there were actually a couple of fishermen in the back. Needless to say, such grass-roots participants concurred that the Irish fishing industry is in the direst of straits. A small army of fisheries officers enforcing quotas only means that even more good fish is dumped at sea, as fishermen strive to maximise the value of what they can land. The destruction goes on, while it is impossible for the few modern boats in the fleet to pay for themselves.

The Common Fisheries Policy is now starkly revealed to be a failure, the Napoleonic aberration that many of us have always contended it was, with the retreat from Moscow well under way, the troops perishing, the dancing continuing in Brussels with Waterloo just around the corner. If the EU wants to survive, it had better look up the better components of its foundations pretty smartly, such as the Catholic principle of subsidiarity. It is perfectly possible to manage a fishery successfully, but only on the basis of a proper sense of ownership and shared responsibilty on the part of its participants.

The suits reckon that the likes of me need to get real. How can anyone go to Brussels and seriously propose to scrap the CFP? What’s this nonsense about reasserting ownership of the nation’s resources? I ask who lives in the real world anyway; the suits with their Mercs and expense accounts, or the people who actually have to go out and wrest a living in the morning? Are the crowd inside the magic bubble going to listen to the ones outside in the wind, or not? Do they really want a polical melt-down on top of the financial one, or what?

Well, we have the Greens in power anyway. Trevor Sergeant was there, talking about ‘Ireland, the food island’. I felt like getting up and asking was he happy at the prospect of the ‘food island’, surrounded by much of the richest sea of Europe, not having a fishing industry? But as it was he was struggling to make his voice heard above the sound of the brass band and the presidential helicopter arriving outside. Lucky herself is so good at being one of us, and telling us that inspite of everything we’re all grand, and how fortunate the Irish food industry is to have such good leadership....

I’m still living in hope of that tuna trip within the next fortnight. Do make contact if you are interested.

JA, 07/09/08