Stefan Griesbach

Have a good weekend.

Bye.

The Irish fishing industry is in massive trouble.

From when I started 20 years ago, where my biggest problem was not to buy too much fish, to now struggling to find what we need.

We used to have an wholesale business selling to all the restaurants in Galway.

And eight years ago, I decided to switch off, stop the wholesale, just to focus on the retail.

Because it was harder and harder to get fish, and I could not supply a restaurant.

Or I would have had to kind of make compromise on the quality, on the origin, the sourcing of the fish.

so we stuck to Irish fish, which is harder and harder to get.

The reality is 80% of the fish we eat in Ireland is imported, be it salmon, be it sea bass, be it cod.

We export our best fish.

We export because we get better price because we cannot sell those species in Ireland because the consumers are a little bit conservative.

People have some expectation of what they're going to eat as fish.

Like, no, so they want cod or they want egg.

So if there's no local cod or no local egg, you might have some egg coming all the way from Namibia.

I mean, imagine people flying silver egg from Namibia to Spain and then it comes by freight to Ireland.

It's insane.

And then people in Namibia cannot purchase those fish because we're putting pressure on the price.

Same for us here, like, you know, that fish, I cannot afford to buy anymore because it's sent to the French market.

We're just going to pay crazy money for a black sole or for a turbot.