The drastic depletion of Irish fish stocks since larger, more modern European fleets gained access to our waters has been acknowledged and bitterly criticised.
It is argued that nothing could be done about it after the initial decision on Common Market entry was made, as farmers "benefited" for years from EU agricultural support systems while fishermen watched the source of their livelihood being plundered and dwindle away.
But there is an inexplicable silence in European and Irish political circles in the face of mounting evidence that the human cost of this trade-off is still growing - and will continue as Irish fishermen are forced to push their ageing vessels beyond acceptable risk levels to reach ever more distant fishing grounds, where they are still outweighed and outnumbered by huge overseas fleets.
In recent years, and even recent months, there has been an accumulation of incidents involving old Irish boats and foreign boats.
Lives have been lost, and fishermen say the toll would be even greater were it not for the modern, self-inflating life-rafts and more efficient rescue services.
This is a life-and-death issue transcending economic considerations, and the developing pattern surely deserves urgent political scrutiny and action.
There are other, less vital but nonetheless important repercussions, and one such is the decline in the proud tradition of boat-building.
The period from the mid1960s to the 1980s saw a burgeoning of local boat-building skills and the growth of small boatyards. Inshore fishing, and readily accessible offshore grounds, were still viable; there were 50 per cent BIM grants for new boats, and the craft of timber boat-building was developing as an area of skilled employment and considerable potential.
The small Carrolls' Boatyard in the village of Ballyhack on the Waterford estuary is an example. Paddy Carroll, drawn to carpentry from an early age, had built his first boat - a salmon punt - in 1939.
As the incipient Irish fishing industry began, belatedly, to perceive its development potential, he undertook his first commercial contract - the building of a 29-foot half-decker for BIM in 1968. This boat, a progression from the traditional salmon yawl, was built in the open.
Between 1968 and 1981 he built some 30 half-deckers, using larch on oak frames in a carvel-type design. The timber came from a variety of Irish forests and estates.
In 1982 he began building fully decked vessels, 36-feet long and capable of carrying up to eight tons. Many of these boats survive and are working out of harbours around the coasts, north and south.
But in the late 1980s, as the international fishing industry mushroomed and fish stocks began to deplete, this work dried up.
Today, Paddy's son, John, who runs the yard, admits: "We haven't built a boat on a commercial basis for nine years." The business is kept going by repair work, overhauls and refitting. The steel-roofed yard is now occupied by a modern, 47-foot Tyne Class RNLI lifeboat which is undergoing its five-yearly overhaul.
That single job has kept the yard, and its six or seven regular employees, going for nearly four months.
The future is uncertain unless similar work turns up, but evidently the skills required will be very different to the craft in timber developed by Paddy Carroll. John Carroll says: "Fishing boats were very good to us, but I can't ever see myself making a weekly wage out of fishing boats again."
Outside the shed, on a trailer, sits an object of great beauty - a testament to the disappearing craft. It is a small punt, clinker-built of larch on American oak and meticulously copper-fastened.
The yard workers built it when business was quiet. It took 320 man-hours to build, and in economic terms could not compete with factory-built boats of similar size.
The small fleets operating out of the Waterford estuary villages are largely idle after successive disastrous salmon-fishing seasons. The tiny harbours themselves are being neglected - the concrete pier beside Carrolls' boatyard is sinking and deeply cracked, and could go in the first severe winter storm.
Yet aquaculture, such as mussel-harvesting, seems to have a reasonably promising future in the estuary. And the lobster fishermens' co-ops in Co Waterford and elsewhere are now involved in a sustainable system, with hen lobsters being returned to the sea to replenish stocks.
Also, as leisure boating expands, there are hopes that moderately sized marinas may be developed locally to give spin-off to local businesses.
Plastic and steel may have captured the boat market in economic and practical terms, but they can never replace or match the fine skills, now fading, involved in the indigenously sourced craft industry of timber boat construction.