Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would like to raise three issues. On the court case, I would appreciate it if the Minister could outline for us in writing the circumstances of the decision made by the Department in this instance. What did the court say? I understand that if the court told the Minister to do something, he had to do it. If the regulations as they were written at the time did not allow him to do so, he would have had to amend the regulations to make it happen. In other words, if the court tells the Minister to do something, that does not give him dispensation from law in doing it. He is obliged to change the law so that he can do what he is required to do legally. I ask the Minister to give us a comprehensive explanation of how this was done. If it was possible to do it without a change in the regulation in one case, it should be possible to do it in similar cases. I am curious about it. I am not asking for a detailed explanation today, but I would appreciate it if such an explanation could be forwarded to us and this particular issue could be addressed in it.

The second issue I would like to raise relates to wooden boats, which were mentioned by the Minister. Does he agree it is time to take larger wooden boats out of the system for safety reasons? Does he accept that if a wooden boat is replaced by a steel boat with the same external dimensions, extra tonnage and kilowatts will be needed? As steel is much thinner than timber, its internal dimensions will be larger. My understanding is that the measurement goes by the inside. Basically, I understand that if a steel boat and a wooden boat are the same size, the steel boat requires more tonnage.

The third issue I wish to mention is that in many of these cases, the extra tonnage that is being added is not significant. It is actually quite minuscule. The least the Minister can do is deal with the three issues we have mentioned, namely, the replacement of tonnage, the purchase of boats that are more or less the same size but might be slightly larger and the question of the changes demanded by the Marine Survey Office to comply with safety requirements - in the old days, this would have been seen as safety tonnage - making the technical size of the boat bigger. We need to be clear about the case that is being made.

I also do not follow the argument about the Minister creating the capacity. The total capacity of the fishing fleet will stay the same, because the amount of tonnage and kilowatts in the fishing fleet in its totality will stay the same.