I must say I do not have a whole pile of animosity towards Simon Coveney ( I might have lots of animosity towards his government, but that is a different kettle of fish so to speak
) I have met with him on a couple of occasions and found him to be sharp on the subjects we had in common. He has a knowledge of"things sea" that probably makes him more disposed towards anglers - the alternative politicians could be scary in terms of their ability
So better the devil we know.....
As I said before, he was really well briefed in terms of survivability of released bass so he was right to pursue C&R for the first six months as it would suit the Irish camp. I've no doubt that the last raft of anglers emails etc. were supportive of C&R too. The fact that we have no commercial fishery (legal anyway) means that the terms as agreed are OK for Ireland. We will probably never know what went on, who mooted what or who did the soft deal with the commercials... It would be interesting to know.
If we were like anglers in UK, FR, NL I would be savage with the carry on...