Opinion. FRAP 2021 (partial) Finalisation for End March 2022

Well, I should have known better, shouldn’t I have? writes veteran fisherman, JACK WALSH. With hindsight, I can now see everything more clearly, though this is not to be construed as a positive. What I see is a thoroughly confused fishing rights so-called finalisation for those sectors that should have been dealt with in 2019/20 for the start of the 2021 season.

They got postponed simply because the Fisheries Division failed to do its job timeously for a whole raft of reasons, the main one being incompetence. Let’s be fair to the Minister though, who has by her actions admitted that the 2005/6 allocation process was so poor (irrespective of the obvious RET and political expediency reasons). Therefore, this FRAP 2021/22 needed to be both more transparent and in line with the relevant legislation, failing which the industry would be further damaged in relation to value generation and jobs.

Unfortunately, this apparently still had to be done without losing the so-called political imperatives, though this is certainly one industry which is more than adequately transformed in every respect. This made it an even more difficult task for the Fisheries Division to perform, which finally resulted in the Minister’s demand for immediate results, and rendered the whole exercise almost impossible. It is therefore hardly surprising that I have found it necessary to add the word “partial” to this article’s heading, for reasons that will be explained later herein.