A Pope's Friday penance, fertile farmland and an inhospitable coastline has not made it the most enviable State job in the past.
Now the man charged with developing Irish sea fisheries should find his life a little easier, thanks to recent Government initiatives.
Even the prospect of having no job at all appears to have been lifted, as Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), the Irish Sea Fisheries Board, is given a new lease of life. "Yes, although I do think they have a value, the days of reviews are over," Mr Pat Keogh (48), BIM chief executive, comments, with reference to a coalition party's former plans to abolish the organisation altogether.
A Price Waterhouse report commissioned by the last government had recommended reorganisation of both sea and inland fisheries structures, with BIM being replaced by a new commercial sea fisheries and aquaculture body. It had also proposed that responsibility for training be transferred to FAS. However, the administration of the recently announced £50 million investment scheme for the whitefish fleet has "given us a very definite mission statement", Mr Keogh says.
And uncertainty about the future of fisheries training also appears to have been removed, with confirmation of plans for a second school. The new training centre in Castletownbere, Co Cork, is due to be up and running in March, complementing the existing national centre in Greencastle, Co Donegal. Significantly, Fianna Fail has also lived up to its pre-election promise of a national maritime college for both naval and merchant marine training, having earmarked £200,000 in the Budget for initial studies into the proposed location at Haulbowline.
It is a source of much satisfaction - to Mr Keogh and for those in the commercial fishing industry who hold him in high regard - that he should be at the helm at a time of such optimism.
The Carlowman has no obvious links with the coastline, although his wife, Siobhan, a primary school teacher, is from west Limerick. The economist with an agricultural science primary degree and MA from UCD worked in the ESRI and in the Pigs and Bacon Commission before joining BIM in 1979.
At the time, the board was still at the forefront of major expansion, having placed much of its trust in selected young fishermen who had moved to Killybegs in Co Donegal and were to become some of the leading mackerel skippers in Europe. Government grants for vessels and for training gave fishermen like Mr Kevin McHugh from Achill, Co Mayo, Mr Des Faherty from the Aran Islands, Co Galway, and the O'Shea brothers from Castletownbere the start they needed, enabling them to build bigger and better boats with the latest in technology - latterly without any State aid whatsoever.
When the Common Fisheries Policy was introduced in 1983, mackerel was not subject initially to quota. The map was to change significantly, however, and critics now say the State's policy left the backbone of the Irish industry - involved in whitefish - behind. Some blame Europe, some blame successive governments for having insufficient political commitment to reaping the benefits of Europe's second largest sea area. At EU level, there were two major developments: conservation measures aimed at protecting fish stocks from merciless new technology were introduced; and Europe's largest fishing fleet - that of Spain - became a member. The Irish Box, a 70,000 square-mile sea area, was designated to restrict Spanish and Portuguese access to Irish waters for 10 years, until 1996.
For some 15 years from 1983, there was a period of retrenchment, which began when BIM was forced to repossess State-aided vessels which did not pay. The future seemed to lie with fish farming, and significant interest was shown by Norway - the European market leader in farmed Atlantic salmon - in relatively uncrowded and unpolluted Irish waterways. Pat Keogh was to make his mark in both middle and senior management in BIM's market development and aquaculture and planning divisions. Both fin-fish and shellfish farmers were earmarked for BIM's technical expertise, while Udaras na Gaeltachta also recognised the opportunities in Gaeltacht areas where there was little alternative employment.
Mr Keogh was appointed deputy chief executive in 1989, and became the public face of the board under his boss, Mr Tony Gannon. In contrast to his peers, he did not take a pessimistic view of a sector which one public official was to describe as of less significance to the economy than hairdressing.
In 1991, for instance, at a conference hosted by the Sherkin Island Marine Station in Cork on Ireland's future within a patently inequitable Common Fisheries Policy, he made the first of many statements which could be regarded as political. He pointed out that Ireland was still not catching the full allocation of several fish quotas, while being forced by Brussels to cut back on fleet size. And he questioned the value of receiving EU subventions when £16 million worth of fish - the then estimate - was being taken by non-Irish vessels from these waters.
This figure has increased to at least £2 billion annually, given that Ireland has 16 per cent of Community waters and takes less than 5 per cent of the catch. The Naval Service recently valued our full marine ecological resource at £30 billion, based on computations contained in the recent report published by the UN Independent World Commission on the Oceans.
As Mr Keogh points out, fishermen do not benefit from the sort of market supports that have sustained the agricultural sector within the EU. If access to Irish fish stocks was "traded off" for agricultural concessions when the State joined the EU, skippers have not even been compensated. In the last tranche of structural funds, the fishing industry only received about 1 per cent of the total, with £60 million awarded under the 1994-1999 Operational Programme.
The industry would need to receive greater benefits next time round, and the fact that many coastal communities are within the 15 counties submitted for Objective 1 status is "very positive", Mr Keogh says. "We still need a far greater level of processing activity, and we won't develop that without EU support." In tandem with the whitefish fleet renewal scheme, which involves about £12 million in Government and EU grants for 31 vessels, BIM is appointing five fish quality officers to improve handling and grading of fish. "We need good handling and packing, even if we are not processing some of this fish ourselves," he says.
"Increasingly, the multiples are shortening their supply chains as they want to have closer contact with primary producers. For our part, we have to have a good product to sell."
The trend in other EU states, including Britain, towards supermarket ownership of fleets may be of some concern to Irish skipper/owners and the communities dependent upon them; however, Mr Keogh points out that catering represents some 50 per cent of the final value of seafood on the home market. "Restaurants and hotels have become such a significant presence in the sector," he says. And professional fishmongers will "continue to hold their own" on the fresh end of the market, he believes.
At the same time, domestic consumption of fish is still small, at just over nine kilos per head per annum. "We would like to see people eating more fish, but you have to balance that against the demand for Irish fish and shellfish abroad."
In spite of all the environmental rows, he sees a great future for fish and shellfish farming. A new cross-Border initiative crossing 12 counties will involve recruitment of eight staff, and three regional officers are also being appointed. BIM is trying to bridge the gap between aquaculture and commercial fishing by applying fish-farming techniques to bottom mussel cultivation in areas like the Waterford Estuary.
Lobster enhancement has proved successful, but it raises questions about the rights of "those who sow being able to reap".
Management of inshore fisheries has become a very thorny issue, particularly when larger Irish vessels have been seen regularly fishing inside the six to 12-mile limit.
"If we don't get our own inshore management right, we can't complain about management regimes beyond that, as in Brussels," Mr Keogh agrees. Nonetheless, the wider political dimension is of crucial significance, given that equal application of a complicated regulatory system has become something of a nonsense.
The EU Common Fisheries Policy is up for review in 2002, and already EU Commission officials have said that there will be no "institutional revolution". The principle of relative stability, under which Ireland cannot have a greater share of the resource in spite of its proximity, is likely to remain unchanged unless a majority of EU member-states decide otherwise.
The Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Dr Woods, recently appointed former IDA chief executive, Mr Padraic White, to chair a task force to prepare Ireland's case. No further names have been released as yet, but BIM expects to be represented.
Mr Keogh can't say it now, but it will take a lot more than a task force - or even a minister - to make any significant change in Ireland's position. If the number of foreign fishing and research vessels in Irish waters is any indication, everyone else wants to be out there - so why don't we?
