Fishing Industry
Killybegs is a natural deepwater harbour with a depth of 12 meters at low water spring tide at the new €50 million pier completed in 2004. The harbour is home to all the largest Irish midwater pelagic trawlers, and a modest whitefish fleet, but it handles many other types of shipping as well. These include passenger cruise liners and mixed specialist cargoes. In recent years Killybegs has become the favoured port for the importation of wind turbines, and is a service port for the offshore gas/oil drilling rigs.
The town is the centre of the Irish pelagic fishing and processing industries, as it specialises in the processing and freezing of species such as mackerel, herring, scad, and blue whiting. The finished processed fish is exported to markets in Africa, the Middle East and Europe by freezer ships. However, due to blanket enforcement of EU fishing regulations on Irish vessels by the Irish Department of the Marine, starting in 2005, and mackerel shoals remaining longer in Norwegian waters, there has been a downturn in the fishing industry in the town. This has led to redundancies in the fish processing industry, in which the fish factory workers have been the hardest hit.
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