Irish fishing and the EU

Lockstep

Hearing a fair few people these days claiming that if we left the EU, we could use fishing to boost the economy as something like €1billion worth of fish has been taken out of Irish waters since we joined the EU.

Is there any truth in this or is it misrepresented hear-say?

Also, anyone know whether or not we're a net contributor or a net benefector of EU cash?

#15

I think Scofflaw has made some detailed posts on this in the past.
AFAIK, the figures are wildly exaggerated. We're also a net benefactor of EU cash, to the best of my knowledge.

P. Breathnach

Lockstep wrote: »

...
Also, anyone know whether or not we're a net contributor or a net benefector of EU cash?

Over the years, we have been net beneficiaries of EU funds, to a phenomenal extent (to my mind, embarrassingly so, way beyond what might be seen as our reasonable needs).

I am charmed by your use of language, because it gives me to opportunity to say that we have been net contributors of fish, albeit not to anything like the extent that is often claimed. It's rather in the tradition of "the one that got away".

oscarBravo

We've been a net beneficiary since we joined. Based on bubble-era growth projections we were on course to become a net contributor fairly soon (maybe even this or next year) but I think we'll be in beneficiary status for the foreseeable future as things stand.

And yes, there have been detailed discussions here on the value of fishing. The short version is that every figure you've seen has probably been largely invented, then multiplied by a factor that depends on the phase of the moon, the wind direction, and the political agenda of whoever published it.

Lockstep

Ah yeah, I wasn't too confident in the claims themselves: they were all just hearsay and buzzwords thrown around during the general election. Figured some of ye might have heard more about it.

clonmahon

The Internet is a wonderful thing, full of all sorts of useful information, including about Irish fishing.

Try this link, from the Marine Institute, this report says “800,000 tonnes is estimated to be taken in the Irish EEZ”
and

“In terms of values catches from the waters around Ireland are worth around €800 million annually of which around €460 million worth are taken from the Irish EEZ.”

This appears to value the catch at 575 euros per tonne. In 2008 the average wholesale price of fish landed at irish quaysides was 961 euro per tonne http://www.sfpa.ie/.

The report also reads
“It should be pointed out that this estimate is likely to be a biased underestimate of the true landings value since, in general, quay prices in Ireland are lower that other nations”

At average 2008 wholesale Irish fish prices (961 euro per tonne) that 800000 tonnes of fish was worth by my estimate 768 million euros a year at Irish quayside prices. If we factor in the higher value of catch landed at foreign ports, we could be looking at about 1 billion euros worth of fish from our waters every year. About 25% of this is taken by our fleet the rest by our EU neighbours.

So to address Lockstep’s query “something like €1billion worth of fish has been taken out of Irish waters since we joined the EU”, The answer is no about €1billion worth of fish are taken from our waters every 16 months. No where near as valuable as our farming but not small change either.

Scofflaw

clonmahon wrote: »

The Internet is a wonderful thing, full of all sorts of useful information, including about Irish fishing.

Try this link, from the Marine Institute, this report says “800,000 tonnes is estimated to be taken in the Irish EEZ”
and

“In terms of values catches from the waters around Ireland are worth around €800 million annually of which around €460 million worth are taken from the Irish EEZ.”

This appears to value the catch at 575 euros per tonne. In 2008 the average wholesale price of fish landed at irish quaysides was 961 euro per tonne http://www.sfpa.ie/.

The report also reads
“It should be pointed out that this estimate is likely to be a biased underestimate of the true landings value since, in general, quay prices in Ireland are lower that other nations”

At average 2008 wholesale Irish fish prices (961 euro per tonne) that 800000 tonnes of fish was worth by my estimate 768 million euros a year at Irish quayside prices. If we factor in the higher value of catch landed at foreign ports, we could be looking at about 1 billion euros worth of fish from our waters every year. About 25% of this is taken by our fleet the rest by our EU neighbours.

So to address Lockstep’s query “something like €1billion worth of fish has been taken out of Irish waters since we joined the EU”, The answer is no about €1billion worth of fish are taken from our waters every 16 months. No where near as valuable as our farming but not small change either.

You don't really need to do back of the envelope calculations, though, and they're likely to come badly unstuck when you try to project them back. Pew Research, fortunately, assemble fisheries figures for all EEZs worldwide, and those figures are accessible here: http://www.seaaroundus.org/eez/372/14.aspx

Click on the button marked "Show Tabular Data" down at the bottom right of the screen, and you can plug those figures into a spreadsheet if you want to work out what other EU countries have fished in Irish waters any year since we joined.

In total, other EU countries fished a total of $11.25bn from Irish waters between 1973 and 2006. Ireland fished $3.76bn from Irish waters in the same period. However, we also fished $3.73bn from UK waters under the CFP during the same period, so our total fishing under the CFP rules 1973-2006 is about $7.5bn, compared to the $11.25bn extracted by other EU countries from Irish waters.

Assuming Ireland fished its waters alone, and neither fished UK waters nor allowed other EU countries to fish its waters, Ireland would, in theory, have made an additional $3.75bn over the 33 years - about an extra $115m a year.

However, that's only theory, because in fact the Irish fleet is largely coastal, and we fish in the coastal waters of the Irish and UK EEZ, while the EU boats largely fish in the deeper waters. For us to have availed of the fish we lost to other EU countries, we would have had to redevelop the Irish fishing fleet to give us deeper water capacity we currently - and historically - lack. That, in turn, would have involved a good deal of investment in the Irish fleet that the Irish government has never historically been interested in providing, and a vision for Irish fishing which the Irish government has historically never had.

Fishing in Ireland has never been a big employer - it employed about 10,000 people at Independence, mostly part-time, mostly coastal, and it employs about 10,000 people now, mostly part-time, mostly coastal. There has never been a big fishing lobby in the Dáil, and there has never been any major thought or effort put into fishing by the Dáil - much of the development of the Irish fishing sector has been with EU money and support (5 of the 7 fisheries vessels, for example, were paid for by the EU).

cordially,
Scofflaw

clonmahon

Help me out here a little Scofflaw with these figures you have drawn my attention to. The figures for Irish waters (http://www.seaaroundus.org/eez/372/14.aspx?d=1) are in US dollars at 2000 values (why US dollars at 2000 values?). The figures for UK waters are (http://www.seaaroundus.org/eez/826/4.aspx) in tonnes. You are giving all your figures in US dollars, how are you converting tonnes caught in UK waters into US dollars. Is this live weight or landed weight, what assumptions are your figures based on. The figures here in US dollars at 2000 values are calculated how ?, at what wholesale price is the fish being valued.

How can these figures be reconciled with those from the Marine Institute I quoted earlier. Or those from Sea Fisheries Protection Authority for 2001 of 320,639 live weight landed at Irish ports, or the Euro Stat figure of 356413 tonnes live weight for 2001. 36000 tonnes in the difference here.

I’m not trying to grind an axe here I’m trying to get a handle on the real value of our fishing. This debate is dominated by two extremes on the one hand people like the shinners throw out improbably high figures, on the other are those who dismiss our waters as inconquential. The figures from various official and NGO sources are very variable. There is also the question of illegal fishing and the failure of the CFP to rationally manage Europe's fishing waters.

I am convinced the kind of figures the sinners throw out are far too high, but I remain unconvinced that your figures right.

clonmahon

The landing figures I quoted can be found at

The Euro Stat figures at
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/refreshTableAction.do?tab=table&plugin=1&pcode=tag00076&language=en

The Sea Fishery Protection Authority figures at
http://www.sfpa.ie/

Scofflaw

clonmahon wrote: »

Help me out here a little Scofflaw with these figures you have drawn my attention to. The figures for Irish waters (http://www.seaaroundus.org/eez/372/14.aspx?d=1) are in US dollars at 2000 values (why US dollars at 2000 values?).

To provide year to year comparison at constant value.

clonmahon wrote: »

The figures for UK waters are (http://www.seaaroundus.org/eez/826/4.aspx) in tonnes. You are giving all your figures in US dollars, how are you converting tonnes caught in UK waters into US dollars. Is this live weight or landed weight, what assumptions are your figures based on. The figures here in US dollars at 2000 values are calculated how ?, at what wholesale price is the fish being valued.

Ah - you want this link: http://www.seaaroundus.org/eez/826/14.aspx

That's the one for UK values in dollars by fishing country.

clonmahon wrote: »

How can these figures be reconciled with those from the Marine Institute I quoted earlier. Or those from Sea Fisheries Protection Authority for 2001 of 320,639 live weight landed at Irish ports, or the Euro Stat figure of 356413 tonnes live weight for 2001. 36000 tonnes in the difference here.

The methodology used is explained on the site.

clonmahon wrote: »

I’m not trying to grind an axe here I’m trying to get a handle on the real value of our fishing. This debate is dominated by two extremes on the one hand people like the shinners throw out improbably high figures, on the other are those who dismiss our waters as inconquential. The figures from various official and NGO sources are very variable. There is also the question of illegal fishing and the failure of the CFP to rationally manage Europe's fishing waters.

I am convinced the kind of figures the sinners throw out are far too high, but I remain unconvinced that your figures right.

Well, they're hardly "my" figures - they are the figures used by fisheries scientists worldwide when calculating things like sustainable catches, because they're the only single comparative set of figures for all EEZs. There will be imperfections in the data, and areas open to quibble, but in general you'll find that the different figures from the different sources can be explained by differences in exactly what catch is recorded. Most fisheries figures are either by country of landing (and never mind the origin of the catch) or by ICES area. ICES areas are fine, but they're an entirely different set of areas from the national EEZs, and cannot therefore answer the question as to how much the catch in the Irish EEZ is.

The original way I came across these figures was to phone around BIM, the various government departments, the Marine Institute etc asking how you found out how much was caught in Irish national waters - and the answer, when you were eventually passed to "the guy who knows", was always these figures.

The Shinners' figures I'm afraid you can simply discount, as indeed you can pretty much discount any set of figures offered by any politician or political group. They're simply a multiple of a nice round number by the number of years we've been in the EU.

cordially,
Scofflaw

censuspro

Anyone know what the outcome of the Spanish fishing vessel that was detained by Naval Service for alleged breach of regulations? The Irish Times had had a small piece a few days ago but there wasnt much details. What were the alleged breach of regulations?