Those issues are in play this week as EU fisheries ministers meet to decide on the catch levels for the North East Atlantic. The EU Common Fisheries Policy requires that stocks are fished at or below levels capable of sustaining healthy populations in the longer term. Unsurprisingly, international NGOs have criticised the Irish position in pushing for quotas above scientifically advised limits for cod, haddock or herring from the Celtic Sea.

We are also delaying a core fisheries’ protection measure — Marine Protected Areas. Legislation has not even been introduced to the Oireachtas despite a EU requirement that they be in place by 2020.

This business-first policy is a denial of environmental realities on a Trumpian scale. Add the changes brought by climate change and the prospect of a post-Brexit fisheries free for all and it is hard not to be pessimistic. Just as it ignores the consequences of Food Harvest 2025, our Government turns a deaf ear to scientific advice on fish stocks, thereby giving commercial interests an unsustainable priority. This must change before fish stocks — our food — are destroyed.