Galway In Days Gone By

Saving the fisheries

The Ministry of Fisheries are at last awakening to the fact that if the fishing industry is to be saved for the country, practical steps will need to be taken to assist the fishermen to provide proper boats, gear and equipment generally.

The type of fishing boat used on the western seaboard was obsolete across the Channel many years ago. At a public inquiry held at Kilkee last week, by Messrs. Greene and Gallagher, of the Department of Fisheries, into the conditions of industry on the Clare coast, the Rev. M. Breen, P.P., urged that the Department should take up the whole problem of improving Irish sea fisheries, and stated that he had it on the authority of a member of the Executive Council that if the Minister for Fisheries was devised, with the aid of his experts, a sound, practical scheme, the Government would not hesitate to spend a million, or even more, on the project.

At present, said Father Breen, Irish waters were yielding a golden return to foreign trawlers. Loans for canoes and nets, or a motor boat here and there, he pointed out, did not meet the case.

1950

Buttering up farmers

The Minister for Agriculture has revealed this week that only half of the co-operative societies have so far replied to his proposal that farmers should accept a lower price for their milk in exchange for a guaranteed market for their butter over a period of years.

Most of the replies have been against the proposal, and it seems unlikely that those who have not yet replied are going to turn the scale the other way.

Unofficial estimates of the situation seem to agree that there is an overwhelming mass of opinion against the idea that milk prices payable by the creameries to their suppliers should be reduced.

Mr. Dillon has made it very clear that he would put his proposals into effect only if the farmers asked him to. Further, the Taoiseach endorsed the promise when he received a representative deputation.

Accordingly, the question now to be faced is, in Mr. Dillon’s words, “where do we go from here?” It will be a most difficult matter to find an answer that will please everybody, for the conflict of interests seem to be insoluble.

Pictured:  Then Mayor of Galway City, Michael D Higgins, taking part in a tree planting at Rinville, Oranmore, on March 4, 1991.