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

I will be brief. It is getting late in the day, we still have an awful lot to discuss at this committee this evening and I must also attend the Dáil. I accept the Minister's comments up to a point and that the current inequitable fishing arrangement was arrived at in the 1980s. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. We do not receive a disproportionate amount of German mine or British mine yields or any other wealth. Fishing was the one resource for which everyone made a power grab. I did not agree with the decision when it was made and I still do not agree with it. One might say, as the Minister has, that nothing can be done about this. Normally I would accept that but I believe the Government, up until March 2016 and whoever comes after, has a unique opportunity to do something about this situation. Our neighbours in the UK are rewriting the rulebook. It is important for this State to say: "Well if it is good enough for the UK to rewrite the rulebook then Ireland cannot agree to any rewriting of the rulebook unless a few rules are changed for us also." God loves a trier and the crying baby gets the bottle. If one does not cry one does not get the bottle. The Government should put down a stake in this wide negotiation into which the UK Government is entering. Let us be honest about it, other countries perennially put down stakes at EU meetings over matters they consider of national importance - over things that happened more than 100 years ago.

It is a travesty that Ireland has only 4% of the EU fish, even though 14% of the fish is in our waters and is worth €2 billion to €3 billion per year. It is equivalent to all the funding being paid annually by the EU. Can the Minister indicate if the Government will, if re-elected, make a case in Europe that the totally unjust 1980s arrangement should be put to rights? We have a unique opportunity because there is no doubt we will be asked to support some package for the UK and I do not believe we should give them a free lunch. The interests of our people must be negotiated as well. We are not looking for anything that is not ours, we are just looking for our own property back.

One of the big failings of the Common Fisheries Policy was the failure to get the Hague preferences made permanent. A great play is made every year to save the Hague preferences and each and every year they are "saved". Some year a Minister will fail to save them and that is worth 70 or 80 jobs, as the Minister has said himself. Will the Minister say how confident he is that the Hague preferences will be saved?

This committee and the sub-committee have done a lot of work on the inshore fisheries sector regarding coastal communities and islands. One of the very sensible proposals was to seek to reserve a greater area of sea for boats measuring under10 m. In the context of population it seemed that this would suit a lot more fishermen because 80% of the boats in Ireland are under 10 m. Electorally there are more people involved with small boats than bigger boats. Has any effort been made to sell the idea as a conservation measure of the fish and of the communities? In its treaties the EU is always talking about protecting rural, isolated and depopulated communities. Has the Minister put the proposal forward officially in Brussels that Ireland would get a significant extension of sea area which would be retained solely for boats under a certain size? This is a way to help our inshore fishermen. Obviously that would be beneficial for France or Spain but because we are an island - and as far as I am concerned we live in one country that goes the whole way around the island - because of our coast Ireland probably has more shoreline than any other country in Europe. I would be interested to have an update on the case made by the Minister to his colleagues in Europe and how much tick tacking he has done with colleagues across Europe. Our British colleagues would be very interested and Scotland would be incredibly interested in this proposal. Minister Michelle O'Neill in Northern Ireland would also be interested in the whole island approach. Will the Minister indicate what he has actually done at European level to progress the idea, put forward by this committee, to increase the inshore area reserved for smaller boats? If one lobbies them right, many French fishermen would be in favour of the proposal. I am sure small, inshore fishermen in Spain and other countries feel the same challenges as our inshore fishermen from the large factory fishing boats. I am very interested to find out what the Minister has done to promote the idea which was unanimously put forward by the sub-committee, set up by this committee.