Fisherman’s Dues

For a few scallops more

fter all the fussing and fighting, the protests, the social media storms, the unanswered emails, the unanswered phone calls, we had always expected that there would be some kind of fish fireworks when this day finally came.

Haddocks leaping through the air, cod exploding into confetti, the odd dolphin leaping through a rainbow ark as seagulls danced The Macarena.

In the end, it was a cold, damp July Wednesday down at a grey and lifeless North Pier when Ivan Toole was told that, yes, finally, he and the other fishermen could land their fish here in their hometown.

This historic moment happened at 3pm this afternoon, as Brendan Sheehy from SISK broke radio silence and met up with the local fishermen representative.

“Yeah, I was expecting this to be a little more momentous,” says Toole, as we sit down to go over today’s victory chat. “In the end, I think we’re all so tired, and jaded, and incredibly wary, we really won’t register all this until we’ve been landing here for a week or two.

“Uninterrupted…”

It’s been 12 and a half years since Ivan Toole became the last fisherman to work out of the old Greystones harbour – before it went electric – and it’s pretty remarkable that it’s taken this long for him to gain the right to fish there again.

Remarkable verging on feckin’ ridiculous.

We won’t go down the long and winding road that got us from there to here again. Instead, let’s just believe that, hallelujah, the Greystones fishermen’s boat has finally come in…

You can dig back through all the harbour shenanigans leading up today right about here.