Anger as NI fishing boats impounded by Irish Navy warship

The Garda confirmed the vessels were detained in Dundalk Bay in the Irish Republic at around 11am yesterday for alleged breaches of fishing regulations.

An Irish naval vessel the LE Orla detained two UK-registered boats fishing in Dundalk bay, a Garda spokesperson confirmed.

They were escorted to port in Clogherhead, where they were detained by Gardai under the 2006 Fisheries Act.

A detention order was issued at Dundalk district court for 48 hours in respect of both vessels.

The incident follows the collapse of a gentleman’s agreement which allowed vessels from NI and the Republic reciprocal access to each other’s inshore waters.

The Voisinage agreement was unilaterally suspended in 2016 after Dublin’s Supreme Court ruled that it had not been incorporated properly into Irish law.

Currently, Northern Ireland vessels are banned from fishing inside the Republic of Ireland’s six-mile limit, but the Republic’s fleet has not been excluded from NI waters.

DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds branded the incident “quite outrageous” and said it exposed the Irish government as “fair weather friends” to Northern Ireland.

The North Antrim MP accused Dublin of “policing a hard border” by not allowing Northern Ireland fishing boats to enter their waters.

He added: “Despite the Voisinage agreement to have reciprocal fishing arrangements, the Irish have never enacted any legislation to give legal effect to the agreement. Legislation was drafted in 2016 but remains on the shelf.

“If they have been holding back as some bargaining chip on Brexit then it utterly exposes the Irish faux concern about a hard border on the island of Ireland.

“When Leo Varadkar talked about soldiers on the border he didn’t mention the Irish sending warships with 76mm guns.”

Independent unionist councillor Henry Reilly called for the Kilkeel vessels and their crews to be released.

“It is scandalous that the Irish authorities can be so blatant in administering double standards and blocking UK fishermen from fishing in their waters while the UK allows Irish-registered vessels to take thousands of tonnes of fish from our waters,” he said.

“The Irish Government proudly boasts that it will protect the all Ireland economy and oppose any hard border in Ireland and then proceeds to break historic bi-lateral UK-RoI agreements and redetermine Kilkeel based fishermen as British foreigners and put up a super hard and policed border in the Irish sea.”

TUV leader Jim Allister said the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) should now move to end the right of the Republic’s fishermen to operate in NI’s waters.

He added: “I pointed out to DAERA in November 2017 that clearly, since the reciprocal nature of the arrangement has been broken, we need to move to end the right of the Republic’s fishermen to operate in our waters.

“Instead of doing so the Permanent Secretary told me he wants to await having a local minister in office. Why? The reciprocal basis of the Voisinage Agreement has been breached, so why are we still pretending it exists and operating it to the disadvantage of local fishermen?

“In light of recent events and I renew my call for our Department to stand up for Northern Ireland’s fishermen. Doing nothing is no longer an option”.