Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Foreign Affairs, Trade and Diaspora spokesperson, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, has welcomed the news that the European Union has agreed to end the practice of dumping millions of tonnes of fish every year, supposedly within six years.<\/p>\n
Deputy Crowe said that the dumping of millions of tonnes of perfectly healthy fish into the sea was an immoral practice, particularly when people were starving and going hungry around the world, and that the practice should have been abolished years ago.<\/p>\n
Deputy S\u00e9an Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a consumer I could never get my head around the warped immoral thinking behind the practice of dumping millions of tonnes of perfectly good and edible fish back into the sea, especially at a time when people are going hungry in Europe or literally starving in other parts of the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis bizarre practice was introduced supposedly as part of a plan to save fish stocks and reach some notional quota established in Brusssels.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiscarded fish is dead before being thrown back into the sea and is of no benefit to anyone except seagulls or other birds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also know that while this was being monitored and regulated some countries trawlers are stripping and decimating the seas around our coastlines of fish.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy party Sinn F\u00e9in has consistently been calling for this practice to come to an end and it should have happened a long time ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, this development is to be welcomed. It was absolutely ludicrous to allow a situation continue where millions of tonnes of perfectly healthy fish were being dumped back into the sea because of EU bureaucracy. At the same time Irish fishermen were coming under more and more pressure from the EU because of low fish stocks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is imperative that the stated six year target for this plan is now met, although it would have been preferable if it could even be phased out before then.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe end of this immoral practice is crucial for the survival of European fish stocks and the Irish fishing fleet, and it is the right thing to do<\/p>\n
\u201cSteps must now be taken here to ensure that there is effective policing of this issue, and the illegal practices of non-Irish fleets in Irish waters like the stripping the seas of fish, comes to an end.<\/p>\n
\u201cMinister Simon Coveney\u2019s agreement while not perfect is clearly a step in the right direction and should be welcomed by consumers, the fishing industry and environmentalists around Ireland and Europe.” <\/p>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Foreign Affairs, Trade and Diaspora spokesperson, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, has welcomed the news that the European Union has agreed to end the practice of dumping millions of tonnes of fish every year, supposedly within six years. Deputy Crowe said that the dumping of millions of tonnes of perfectly healthy fish into the sea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,20,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eu","category-fishing","category-hunger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":685,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions\/685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}