Protect Greystones Fishermen

When construction of the new harbour at Greystones, Co Wicklow, began, all harbour users, including the traditional fishermen and their boats, had their moorings and other facilities removed while the project was being built.

When the harbour was complete, the other users such as leisure clubs were provided with full facilities including new clubhouses, boat yards, storage and so forth.

But the fishermen and their boats were excluded from the new harbour.

This was despite the promises and guarantees we were given before we left in 2008 and on many occasions since, and in spite of the fact that provision of facilities to commercial fishers was included in the planning approval granted by Bord Pleanala.

In 2014, Wicklow County Council issued harbour by-laws which effectively excluded the fishing fleet. The by-laws give a nod to mooring rights but, by imposing other conditions that are impossible to meet, effectively barred the fishing fleet from Greystones Harbour and transformed this traditional community harbour into a purely leisure boating facility.

We, the fishing families of Greystones, do not accept this expulsion and have launched our new campaign to ensure that we can return from ten years of exile to our home port, with full rights to moor, land our catch, store bait and other equipment, and generally carry on our trade as we and our predecessors have traditionally done in Greystones for hundreds of years.



For more than ten years now, we have had to moor at Dun Laoghaire, with huge disruption to our family and social lives. We have to drive to Dun Laoghaire each morning, drive our boats back to our traditional fishing grounds near our home port, then land our catch at Dun Laoghaire before we ready our boats for the next day and FINALLY drive home to Greystones, usually well after eight in the evening after a pre-dawn start.

And being exiled to Dun Laoghaire adds €150 each week in fuel costs alone.

Please sign this petition, which will be presented to the Minister for the Environment, the Minister for the Marine, and to the chief executive of Wicklow County Council.

Your support can help ensure that we can come home at last, and that our skippers and crew can resume a normal existence. We now must negotiate with Wicklow County Council, and every person stepping forward to support our cause will influence how they deal with us and bring a positive outcome closer.

Bring the boats home!