DOZENS OF fishermen from Kilmore Quay, Co Wexford, handed out free fish on O'Connell Bridge in Dublin yesterday to highlight what they see as growing threats to their livelihood.
In protest at the European Commission policy that any catch above quota must be thrown back or discarded, they gave away monkfish, which was on sale at €28 per kilogram in one Dublin fish shop yesterday.
The fishermen and fish processing workers, many of them foreign nationals, also said they were struggling to cope with rising fuel prices.
They left Wexford at 5am, filling two buses. On a busy O'Connell Bridge at 10.30am they displayed placards with messages such as "Fishermen are not criminals" and "Tie up Minister, not boats".
Fisherman Brendan O'Flaherty said that under EU regulations, the fish being handed out free yesterday would otherwise have to be discarded. "By throwing back good fish into the water all you get is fat seagulls. Even though the fish will go in the net and the fish will die, you still cannot take it ashore. This is conservation EU-style," he said.
"There's other issues affecting the industry at the moment as well such as the high cost of fuel oil. We are being crippled."
Mr O'Flaherty called for subsidies for the Irish fishing industry, claiming it could not survive otherwise. But EU fisheries commissioner Joe Borg yesterday ruled out fuel subsidies for the fishing industry as a response to a 240 per cent rise in the price of diesel since 2004, and said "false solutions" did not represent the way forward.
"We must act now to restructure," Mr Borg said, adding that higher quotas would be "completely counterproductive, serving only to further endanger the stocks that fishermen depend on".
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Brendan Smith said that a meeting with the Federation of Irish Fishermen on Thursday was "a very useful and constructive exchange of views".