Ireland : an island nation or a nation of Islands? : impacts of fisheries management on the cultural, historical and livelihood values of island communities

Verkefnið er lokað til 27.05.2020.The management of natural resources, such as fisheries, evoke discourses tempered with emotion and this is especially true for the island communities of Ireland. The historic freedom afforded to islanders, which enabled the maintenance of an intrinsic cultural link to the sea, changed under national and European Union governance. These governance structures, often based on neoliberalist principles, resulted in socio-economic disadvantages for Irish coastal communities. Islanders are, however, resilient people; they have been campaigning for over a decade to reclaim their fisheries rights and have continually questioned the inequity in current structures governing fisheries resources. The Island Fisheries (Heritage License) Bill 2017, can be seen as an accumulation of these efforts. It was progressed by islanders in their attempt to reclaim their island commons, access local fisheries and restore traditional fishing practices. This thesis focuses on the values associated with island fisheries and how these connect or disconnect with the neoliberal management of fisheries in Ireland. This attention to values was enabled methodologically through the use of in-depth qualitative interviews with a range of fisheries participants with knowledge of inshore fisheries and the Island Fisheries (Heritage License) Bill 2017. The key themes which emerged from this research centred on fisheries management, power, Island Fisheries (Heritage License) Bill 2017, confusion and the future. This research demonstrates the complexities associated with the management of natural resources. It also highlights the inequitable power relations which exist within fisheries management and how the top-down dissemination of information evokes much confusion. Small-scale fishermen have been historically neglected from management decisions in Ireland, however this has recently begun to change and the Island Fisheries (Heritage License) Bill 2017 is symbolic of a reinvigorated hope for the future