Irish seafood border: 'Fresh fish coming into Northern Ireland is sent back to Scotland or impounded due to Protocol'

Each time it has been because of minor clerical or packaging issues, he said.

Mr Ewing is a director of the family-run business Ewing's, which has had a fish shop on the Shankill Road for the last 120 years and now delivers quantities of seafood to hundreds of hotels, markets, and eateries across Northern Ireland.

He told the News Letter that, typically speaking, fish arrives into Belfast port onboard 40ft-long lorries from Scotland, operated by one of two big haulage firms.

The lorries contain boxes of fish, lobsters, prawns and shellfish for multiple businesses and generally arrive in the very early hours of the morning.

Here is a breakdown of what happened on those three occasions:

• ONE: ​

About three weeks ago, Mr Ewing said that one 40ft lorry shipment came in from Scotland which contained some items for him.

There were two 3kg boxes of fish onboard destined for a different customer, but which "weren't labelled right", with the result that the entire shipment was detained.

"Why not lift them off and send everything else on?" he asked.

"The whole load I think on that occasion was held back to about 9.30am, and then it was just too late.

"Everybody is down there like 2am or 3am lifting the fish - people coming up from Ardglass and Kilkeel to lift the fish. They can't wait all day.

"We were able to get it at 9.30am; because we are in Belfast it's easy for us, we can go back down. But the rest of the guys couldn't get it.

"They couldn't wait all day and come back from Kilkeel just to lift it, so that was a big problem for them."

• TWO:

The second time it happened, "the paperwork was wrong on one of the products" (he thinks some haddock or whiting) which was again bound for a competitor.

The problem emerged at about 3.30am but it took until 9am for someone with authority at the port to arrive and make a decision.

When they did arrive, the official ordered the shipment back to Scotland.

"But I'm led to believe it couldn't go back," said Mr Ewing.

"Our guys here – it must be environmental health, the port authorities – didn't fill the paperwork in right to send it back to Scotland.

"So it was left sitting in Belfast for another 24 hours until the next morning, when we were able to get the fish a day late. These only have about a five-day shelf-life.

"There'd be live langoustine prawns on there as well – not for myself, but for other companies – and big quantities of it as well.

"They're dead. They're deteriorating very quickly."

He guesses the lorry must have been carrying "tens of thousands of pounds" of produce.

• THREE:

The third time it happened was on Tuesday this week, when a shipment was put on the boat back to Scotland.

On that occasion Ewing's was due a shipment of haddock, having sold out of this particularly popular fish over the previous weekend.

The haddock was rejected because the labels on the individual boxes of fish did not use the word "chilled".

"[The shipment] was rejected, and it came back the next day.

"I find the whole thing ridiculous. We got no fish at all on Tuesday morning."

• ‘IT IS JUST A SHAMBLES’

Mr Ewing said the problem is the Protocol / Windsor Framework, which had previously caused headaches for him because the extra checks involved put the price of the fish up, whilst some GB suppliers decided to stop sending fish to NI because it was too much hassle.

And in the last few weeks "something's changed" again and their shipments are now being halted.

"They need to sort of be human about the whole thing – 'look at the disruption we're causing here to this industry',” he said of the port inspectors.

"This is an awful lot of money. This is people's livelihoods.

"The fishing industry is on its knees at the moment. There's no local fish because of rules and regulations, employment laws.

"The local guys can't get people to work on the boats because of immigration... there's nobody locally to work on the boats now, so there were lots of immigrants previously working and I think something has changed there."

Mr Ewing, now aged 56, said that arrangements had been made to let supermarkets like Tesco sail through the port without hindrance, but this does not apply to a smaller firm like his.

"The whole thing is a shambles," he said.

• ‘SUPERMARKETS GO THROUGH – NOT THE REST OF US’

The News Letter also spoke to another man who has worked for decades in the fish industry (whose name we’ve decided to withhold at his request).

"If there’s one article wrong on it [a delivery], all the fish is rejected and has to be sent back: literally sent back to Glasgow where it comes from,” he said.

"They just go round and change the labels. It’s not as if there’s anything wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the fish.

"They’ve cleared the lanes for the likes of the big supermarkets and the multinationals. They’re going down the green lanes. Everything else is checked.”

He added that the checkers are “only acting within the law”, and that the paperwork on fish is important in case something goes wrong and a batch needs to be traced.

“But we always did this, bringing fish in from Scotland, and before this whole Protocol border thing there was never any stuff – I never remember any of it happening.

"But it’s the way these laws are written out… I’d say the politicians are at fault, more than anybody.

"When they went in to negotiate this whole red lane/green lane thing, they didn’t do their homework on the ordinary guy getting stung like this.”

​The News Letter spoke to Belfast harbour, which said it was a DAERA matter.

DAERA said it was a matter for Belfast City Council.

The council said it could not find the shipments in question because they were not recorded under the name ‘Ewing’s’.

No response had been received from the Northern Ireland Office, which was also asked to comment.

The News Letter has been highlighting problems at Northern Ireland’s ports for some time.

In Feburary, we reported on the case of Luke Barton, a Fermanagh firm which brings horses to and fro between Scotland and NI.

"There is a massive, massive difference pre-and-post Brexit,” said the firm’s Felim Crane.

"I've probably been contacted by about 80 to 90 horse people who no longer travel to [GB] for pony games, of the Horse of the Year Show in Birmingham or London because of these regulations.”