Spanish trawlermen would like nothing better than unrestricted access, cod quotas are under threat and the EU commissioner is sending out mixedmessages. No wonder local fishermen are anxious. Ed Power reports

After decades of quiet stagnation interspersed by brief flurries of modest growth, the Irish fishing industry this week faces a period of unprecedented instability

Speculation that the European Commission is set to open the "Irish Box" - the contentious 50-mile zone located off the west coat - to Spanish trawlers and introduce swingeing cuts in cod quotas has thrown the sector into crisis, prompting warnings by an increasingly militant fishermen's lobby that coastal communities for which the sea is lifeblood could slide into irreversible decline.

Amid ambivalent mutterings from EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Fisheries, Mr Franz Fischler, who on Tuesday declared himself opposed to granting Spain carte blanche access to Irish waters but insisted EU law may force his hand, commentators within the industry have cautioned the Government that the future of fishing is now poised on a knife edge.

Spain's infamously profligate deep-sea fleet could run amok were it set loose in the Irish Box, gorging on lucrative stocks of hake and monkfish and illicitly seizing significant quantities of cod and other jeopardised species, says Mr Michael Keating, fisheries development manager of Bord Iascaigh Mhara, the State agency charged with developing the indigenous seafood trade.

In such circumstances many fishermen - those employed in the sector are almost exclusively male - would see their already modest incomes severely diminished, forcing hundreds to seek employment elsewhere.

Mr Keating said: "Opening the Irish Box to Spain would not just be unfair - it would be extremely harmful to the fishing sector.

"The Spanish have an insatiable appetite. Their nets will not distinguish between fish for which they have a quota and those for which they do not.

"The impact on fishing stocks would be extremely worrying."

The cruelest irony is that the prospect of a rapacious Spanish influx arrives in the wake of a spell of rare - albeit modest - expansion in an industry traditionally hobbled by dilapidated infrastructure and chronic State underfunding.

Buoyed by increasing demand for shellfish across Europe and the Government's ambitious push to overhaul the antiquated whitefish fleet, the value of fish landings climbed steadily through the 1990s - from €124 million in 1993 to €220 million last year .

Direct employment in fishing increased from 15,470 to 15,832 between 1993 and 1997, while exports rose by 23 per cent from €236 million to €289 million.

With a further 10,000 working in spin-off industries such as fish processing, the importance of the sector to coastal communities otherwise devoid of investment cannot be understated.

Renewed competition from Spanish trawlers would dangerously expose the inadequacies of the Irish fishing fleet, argues the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), which has conducted extensive research on the maritime industry.

Relatively few domestic vessels are equipped to trawl deep waters - only 350 ships out of the estimated 2,100-strong Irish fleet regularly ply their trade more than 12 miles from shore - and foreign ships already enjoy free reign over this lucrative territory.

A dearth of modern processing facilities hampers further development, says ESRI economist Mr John Curtis, who points out that only Killybegs in Donegal is equipped to handle pelagic fish such as tuna - a market that has experienced sustained expansion over recent years.

Ireland's modest appetite for seafood doesn't help. Incongruously, given its enviable maritime tradition, the Republic ranks among Europe's least enthusiastic consumers of fish and shellfish. Successive reports by the Galway-based National Nutrition Surveillance Centre suggest that, as a nation, we consume an excess of fatty meats and far too little fish.

Given this distinctively lukewarm attitude, it is scarcely surprising that the industry is concentrated along some of the State's most economically deprived and marginalised areas.

More than 75 per cent of fishing jobs are located on the western seaboard, between Donegal and west Cork. Almost half of those working in the sector reside on the west and north-west coast, in counties designated as disadvantaged by the EU.

The industry argues its peripheral status deprives it of the political clout wielded by other sectional interests, most pertinently the farming lobby.

It argues the Government knowingly accentuated fishing's decline by too readily surrendering sovereignty over territorial waters during negotiations preceding the State's 1972 accession to the nascent European Union.

Under the contentious common fisheries policy agreed 20 years ago, Irish trawlers receive 16 per cent of hake and monkfish quotas in the EU's northern fishing zone, although the State's territorial waters comprise 42 per cent of the area.

In contrast, French waters account for a mere 12 per cent of the zone - although its fisherman are entitled to 49 per cent of the catch. Spain is permitted to land five times more hake and monkfish than Ireland.

Should Spanish trawlers gain access to Irish waters, there is a danger that Ireland's already marginal entitlements will be further undermined, predicts Mr Keating.

Stark predictions this month from conservationists that stocks are already over-farmed has intensified fishermen's sense of foreboding.

The influential Danish-based International Council for the Exploration of the Sea has demanded a blanket ban on fishing within Irish waters, claiming the move is necessary to preserve the cod population.

Spokesman Mr Neil Fletcher said: "We are recommending that these fisheries should also be closed unless they can demonstrate that they are not catching cod as a by-catch."

The organisation's calls were echoed this week by Mr Fischler, who expressed doubt that current levels of fishing in waters around Ireland could be maintained, even in the short term.

While stopping short of backing the calls for an outright prohibition on fishing, he made it clear that quotas set out in the common fisheries policy required urgent review.

The fisheries pact had, he said, "falsified scientific assessment and emptied the sea".

Political expediency rather than economic necessity may ultimately determine the fate of the Irish Box.

If Brussels accedes to the Spanish clamour for access to the territory, the sense of injustice and despair permeating Irish fishing will only deepen, says Mr Keating. Coastal communities believe the Government has remained apathetic for too long as the State is stripped bare of one of its most valuable natural resources.

"If you consider the value of the fish which Ireland has already surrendered since joining the European Union, it is clear that we are net contributors to Brussels," he says.

"The situation will go from the sublime to the ridiculous. Spanish fisherman will have a greater right to the fish lying off the west coast of Ireland than a fisherman from Castletownbere. It is entirely ludicrous."