A fisherman from Inis Bó Finne in Co Donegal has said that he and his crew regularly encounter naval vessels training out from the coast, within 30km of Tory island.
Seán Ó Briain told RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta that these activities have a big impact on the work of fishermen there.
In the interview on current affairs programme Adhmhaidin today, he said they regularly receive warnings from military craft, submarines and ships to leave an area and this makes their work very difficult.
The vessels are mostly British but sometimes America.
"Even last Monday morning as we were starting to lift the crab pots [not far] from Tory island, there were submarines just to the west of us."
He said British and American navy ships train around the area of the Stanton Bank, frequented by local fisherman.
"A lot of the time, you have to leave the area. They give you a warning to stay ten miles away from where they’re training," said Mr Ó Briain.
"There’s a big cost involved with getting fuel and bait on board and getting out that far, to just turn back and you can’t do your day’s work and you return to the pier with nothing to show for it.
"The politicians are doing nothing about it. We think we should be compensated, it’s wasting our time and preventing us from doing our work."
Mr Ó Briain expressed surprise at the amount of coverage of the planned Russian military exercise next week, 240km out from the southwest coast.
He said that although Donegal fishermen regularly encounter craft doing military training, they never receive any warning or information about it from the Government.
"We get no information, it’s not in the papers or on the news or anything, we just get the warnings from the boats themselves.
"That’s okay for trawlers who have all their gear on board and are heading to another area, but our pots are set there and we can’t get out to them. It really impacts our work."
It comes as the Russian Embassy in Dublin urged fishermen in the southwest to "refrain from any provocative actions" ahead of planned exercises by the Russian Navy off the Irish coast.
