Politics

Fisherman: ‘The future of fishing is my key national issue’

Meet the Voters: ‘I am worried about the loss of local services. If fishermen go, the local school is threatened’

Fisherman John O’Brien speaks at the European Parliament. Photograph: Loic Jourdain
Fisherman John O’Brien speaks at the European Parliament. Photograph: Loic Jourdain
Tue Feb 09 2016 - 13:03

[ Meet the Voters series ]

I'm a fisherman, born and reared on the Donegal island of Inis Bó Finne (Inishbofin). My dad, uncles and older brother all fished, and I began when I was in secondary school in Falcarragh.

My wife is from the island and so she understands that sort of life and she also has a good understanding of why you wouldn’t be coming home at a particular time when you might have any amount of problems with the boat or whatever.

We have six children, aged between ten and 32 years of age. Three of my four sons are involved in my family fishing business.

After the school on the island closed, we had to move to the mainland at Magheroarty but we spend as much time out there as we can. We have homes in both places.

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I always voted Fianna Fáil, and at one point I even did a bit of canvassing for the party's Donegal senator Brian Ó Dómhnaill. However, I became very disillusioned after 2007 over Fianna Fáil's decision to push through the ban on drift-netting for salmon.

We depended on that fishery in summer for our livelihood, along with potting and the like, and I was one of a group that decided not to apply for the Government’s 25 million euro compensation package for commercial salmon license holders.

I could have done with the money -the average cheque was about €18,900, but subject to tax - but I didn’t want to sell out my children’s rights. I took my case to the European Parliament, and it is the subject of a documentary film released last year by Loïc Jourdain, called A Turning Tide in the Life of Man/ I mBéal na Stoirme. It’s part of a campaign to get 22 recommendations of an Oireachtas sub-committee report on promoting sustainable rural, coast and island communities implemented.

One of that report’s recommendations advises the Government to consider issuing “heritage licences” which would allow for traditional fishing practices in certain designated areas.

I’m interested in politics because I have no choice - in the fishing, we have to keep in touch with what’s going on as it affects our livelihood, even though ministers come and go and the civil servants take the decisions.

I’d be worried also about loss of services like the post office and schools; the local school here is totally dependent on the inshore fishery, so if we go, it is threatened also.

I get all my news from the radio, because I’m at sea - starting with RTE’s Morning Ireland, then switching to Raidio na Gaeltachta and Highland Radio. When I see newspapers, they are already a day old.

If I had to vote in the morning, I might vote for Sinn Féín's Pearse Doherty as he is good and a local lad, but I'd like to see Fianna Fáíl's position now on salmon. I'd probably give my number two vote to Fianna Fáil's Pat The Cope Gallagher.

I want to make sure there is a viable living for my sons, because we depend now on the brown crab fishery and they aren’t going to get jobs on the big boats in Killybegs when they don’t have family connections.

It’s very hard for anyone to start up in fishing now with the cost of the boat, the struggle for quotas and all that. So the future of fishing is my key national issue, and I suppose the right of island communities to survive is both national and local.

Constituency: Donegal

John O’Brien was in conversation with Lorna Siggins

[ irishtimes.com/election-2016/meet-the-voters ]