On Leenan Pier in Inishowen, County Donegal, the day's catch is still sorted by hand: live brown crab for China, lobster for France. The seafood is as good as it has ever been. The economics behind it are not.
Robert Kearney, who fishes out of Leenan, walked RTE through a catch he described as ordinary for the time of year. "This is a typical catch for August; there's a lot of soft-shell crab on the ground [sea-bed]. We don't have a big quantity of crab, but the quality is very high," he said. "This is destined for China. A van will take it away tomorrow and it will be flown live into Beijing within two to three days."
Then he did the sums out loud. "This may look like a good catch; but it's leaving it tight on the line for running costs. A boat of this size here today, for the diesel and the bait was 800 euro," Kearney said. "Four years ago, we could take this boat to sea and a full day's bait was 200 euro and a full day's diesel was 200 euro."
Prices have moved the wrong way at the other end too. "The price of the shellfish seems to be coming down. It's balanced out now at half the price that it was five years ago," he said. "We've three men on deck and myself; four men to pay. We've bait. We've diesel. It's so tight."
His brother Martin, who fishes lobster from a small boat alongside him, framed the same pressure as a family problem rather than a business one. "Our whole family is based off fishing. If it gets any worse, I'd say it will just be a matter of trying to look for different jobs; that's how important it is - it's running all our houses," he told RTE. "It seems to be just whenever the price of fuel goes up, everybody else is able to put their prices up, except the fishermen."
He is not talking about quitting. "It's one of the best jobs in the world. There are a lot of people and if it wasn't for the love they had for it, this wouldn't be worth it at this stage." What has gone is the next rung on the ladder. "About five or six years ago, I bought my own small boat for fishing lobsters; I always thought I'd be able to build it up and someday get a bigger boat, but that's out the window at this stage, unless you put yourself into massive debt."
Denis Kearney has been fishing crab off this coast since 1978. "I'm fishing since '78... I would say people are just struggling. They're making no fortune," he said. "You couldn't even go now to buy a new boat. Everything has gotten too dear; too expensive."
The state's answer so far has been fuel money. A Fishing and Aquaculture Registered Vessel Fuel Support Scheme, run by Bord Iascaigh Mhara under the EU's Temporary Crisis Framework, covers the five months from March to July 2026. A Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine spokesperson told RTE payments began in July and continued through August, with more than 8.5 million euro paid on 397 applications and a final total expected around 9.8 million euro.
The National Inshore Fishermen's Association has been making a harder argument for months. Speaking on The Fishing Daily podcast in March, NIFA chair Michael Desmond and vice-chair John Menarry said the fleet's problem is not only fuel but decades of quota consolidation. They pointed to 32 million euro worth of additional mackerel quota allocated to Ireland that they say benefits a small number of large refrigerated seawater vessels, with more than 300 inshore members getting nothing: only around 40 inshore boats can access the hook-and-line mackerel fishery, capped at 10 tonnes each, against a national quota of 20,000 tonnes. In the North West herring fishery, they said, 1,500 tonnes went uncaught while the inshore sector was held to 350 tonnes.
Desmond said he takes calls daily from fishermen who can no longer afford to put to sea, and both men warned that coastal villages are turning into "ghost towns" as boats sell up or sit idle. NIFA has also disputed official figures showing rising profitability in the Irish seafood sector, arguing that imported seafood processed and sold as Irish masks a fall in Irish landings.
Everything now points at one report. A Food Vision Seafood Sector Group chaired by former IFA chief executive Michael Berkery, set up in the spring by Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon and Minister of State Timmy Dooley, is due to report later in the autumn. NIFA has said the task force process it was told to engage with stalled, with meetings delayed and no official word on why.
Robert Kearney's stake in the outcome is on the boat with him. His 13-year-old son got up at 5am for a wet, blowing morning on deck; his 18-year-old has been on the payroll since leaving school. "We've done it since we were 12 years of age. We're at it a lifetime. We want to pass it onto the next generation," he said. "I would love to think in a few years, if they wanted to fish that there's something there."
