Sir, We read with great interest the articles in your paper regarding frontier controls within the European Union. The outcome is satisfactory and a victory for common sense - Ireland and the UK will be allowed to keep their land frontier controls.
Our politicians and their negotiators have been kept so busy considering land frontier controls that they appear to have completely overlooked control of the seas around us. Ireland's Exclusive Economic Zone extends 200 miles from the Irish coast and encompasses an area nine times the land mass of Ireland.
Parallel with discussions on land frontier controls, our EU "partners" have been discreetly increasing their control over this zone without any debate whatever. It is conservatively estimated that the value of fish stocks taken by our European partners from our area exceeds £2 billion a year.
We wonder how future historians will judge this loss and those "Good Europeans" who are allowing it to happen. - Yours, etc.,
Chairman,
Irish South & West Fishermen's Organisation,
Castletownbere,
Co Cork.