However, a survey last year by researchers from the University of Exeter and University College Cork of some 1,550 people living around the Irish coast found that fishermen fear the development of the offshore Irish wind sector will have a negative impact on Irish fisheries.
Some 71 per cent of the hundreds of commercial fishermen among those surveyed ranked the loss of access to fishing grounds as the most or second most negative impact of the wind energy sector although 32 per cent of fishermen said they would be interested in alternative employment in the sector. Fishing organisations were not asked to contribute to the committee’s report which nonetheless included a recommendation that “instances of bottom trawling and dredging… be significantly reduced and entirely prohibited within special areas of conservation or marine protected areas”.