The first Board of Directors of the KFO, including from left: Sonny Daly, Paddy Kerins, Joey Murrin, Hughie Moore, Noel McGing, Kevin McHugh, Mick Doyle, Joe Sheeran.

 

The KFO offers a range of services to its members, including:

•  Representing and negotiating on behalf of members’ fishing interests at national and EU levels

 

•  Advising members on fishing-related issues such as licences, capacity, accessing available grant aid, etc.

 

•  Acting as an information conduit on key fishing issues such as Total Allowable Catches (TACs) and quotas

 

•  Facilitating the setting up of group schemes for members benefit, such as pensions, vessel and health insurance

 

•  Providing access to financial support mechanisms for major market price fluctuations, as a result of the KFO’s

designation as a Producer Organisation

 

•  Alerting members to key EU and national decisions that are being taken, that affect their livlihood

 

•  Supplying and sourcing additional opportunities that will benefit members, such as new fisheries opportunities/agreements,

e-commerce and so forth

 

•  Helping to resolve fishing related problems experienced by members or groups of members

 

KFO membership is open to owners and part-owners of EU registered commercial fishing vessels.

Members are required to comply with organisation rules, which will include giving financial support

through an annual levy.

 

Further details are available from the KFO. If you are interested in joining, please contact the KFO Office.

 

Projects

KFO is an active partner in a number of EU-funded projects:

 

 MYFISH (Maximising Yield of Fisheries while Balancing Ecosystem, Economic and Social Concerns) is a collaborative project under the FP7 Cooperation, Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology Programme.  It has a total budget of €6,513,288 which is supported by €5 million funding from the EU; MYFISH runs from March 2012 to February 2016, has a total 31 partners and is led and coordinated by the Technical University of Denmark (DTUAqua).

 

MYFISH aims at developing new Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) indicators that can ensure high levels of fishery yield while respecting ecological, economic and social sustainability thus contributing to achieve the Good Environmental Status (GES) foreseen in the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). This project is particularly relevant seeing MSY by 2015 is a stated objective of the revised CFP.   Its work is particularly significant for the KFO which represents a significant number of stakeholders who will be affected by this issue in coming years.  Read more...

 

ACRUNET (Atlantic Crab Resource Users Network)  is an INTERREG IVB  project of transnational cooperation approved in 2012 under Priority 1 (Promote transnational entrepreneurial and innovation networks), Objective 2 (Enhance competitiveness and innovation capacities in maritime economy niches of excellence) of the Atlantic Area Programme, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). It has a total budget of €2,251 115 and is co-financed by € 1,463  224.  ACRUNET runs from July 2012 to June 2015 involving 17 partners representing fishermen, development and marketing agencies and scientific institutes from all five countries of the Atlantic Area – Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Portugal.

 

ACRUNET was designed to further the initial transnational cooperation between KFO and fellow Producer Organisations in the UK and France which came about when fishermen joined up to address areas of common concern in the brown crab fishing industry. Read more...

 

EfficientShip has recently been approved under the LIFE+ Environment Programme for a total budget of €1,320,000 and EU support of €792,000. In addition to the KFO, there are three partners representing specialist energy firms and agencies in Italy and France. The project is scheduled to begin in late 2014 and finish in 2016; the final details are being discussed.

 

The LIFE+ EfficientShip project will demonstrate the efficiency of an innovative technology for reducing the GHG emissions of thermal engines with power rates from 300kW to 2MW, by 5 to 10%. This will be done by adapting the innovative heat recovery technology (based on the thermodynamic cycle ORC, which converts heat into work) to mobile thermal engines in fishing vessels.

 

The interest in ORC has grown over the past few years, with different applications in heavy industries or biomass production centres that work with power rates of MW. The project will develop and demonstrate the first example ORC module adapted to mobile engines, working with power rates under 1MW. This technology will be installed on an Irish fishing boat and will be tested over a seven month period.