Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Pringle for the question. There was a court case in 2014 following an incident of pollution and a fish kill on the River Tolka. Following that case, Inland Fisheries Ireland advised that a weakness had been highlighted in the Inland Fisheries Act 2010 in respect of its power to prosecute offences and that it was necessary to rectify this by means of a legislative amendment. The original legal advice in 2015 was that Inland Fisheries Ireland's powers to prosecute were susceptible to challenge and that the Department should introduce amending legislation to confirm the powers of the organisation. At that time the legal advice was that it would be achieved by way of an amending provision in the normal course, that was an amendment to the Inland Fisheries legislation that is ongoing in the Department.

Subsequently at a meeting on Thursday, 9 February 2017, the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment were notified by the Office of the Attorney General that Inland Fisheries Ireland did not have the power to prosecute.

This necessitated a Bill and that is why we have fast-tracked this Bill since.