Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 16:

In page 18, line 35, to delete “High Court” and substitute “Minister”.

This amendment centres on the whole issue of penalty points and the worries the fishermen I meet have. It looks to me that regardless of whatever court process, resolution or victory fishermen may have through this process, the fishermen will still have the penalty points on their licence. That is a very significant issue here. The last day we spoke about the unfairness of the situation where a fee has not been set yet for a fisherman who wants to appeal a decision. I tried to get the Taoiseach to intervene but he does not want to do so either. It looks like it will be a decision for the Minister of the day as to what fee will be charged if a fishermen wants to appeal a wrongful decision being made. It is a terrible situation to think fishermen are going to face the highest court in the land to fight their case, perhaps in a very genuine situation. They will also find themselves in a situation where they will not know how much it will cost them to appeal the decision in the High Court. This is totally at the discretion of the Minister who can say from €5 to €500,000, if he or she wants to. That has to be resolved before anybody or any politician can support this.

Fishermen are exasperated. I have spoken to them, including over the weekend, about the situation they find themselves in on many fronts. The Sea-Fisheries (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill is obviously a breaking point for many of them. It is almost a year since Brexit was agreed between Michel Barnier and Lord Frost but no work has even begun between the Government’s civil servants and fish producer groups on this critical Common Fisheries Policy review.

Fishermen are angered and have a right to be. Since the disastrous Brexit decision we are spending the bulk of our time on seeing how we can bring the Sea-Fisheries (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill through the Dáil. Instead of sitting around at these committee meetings to see if we can get a better deal for the fishermen in regard to quotas, their livelihoods and overturning some of the decisions the task force seems to have agreed on in respect of the decommissioning of vessels, which is another issue in itself, we are here talking about the High Court and the wording and we not even being able to establish how much the fishermen who appeal their decisions will be asked to pay for their appeal.

These issues are causing so much disquiet among the fishing industry that the recent report drawn up by the task force is not being supported by the Irish South and West Fish Producer's Organisation, led by Patrick Murphy, and rightly so. He sees the destruction of the fishing industry in this country and that there is little or no hope at present. Unfortunately, we in the Dáil are pandering to this rather than spending hours fighting to get extra quota for fishermen and seeing if there are any opportunities are out there? Have we thrown in the towel? That is what we should be focusing on instead of spending time on the final minutes of another nail in the coffin of Irish fishermen.

Regardless of a fisherman's innocence in respect of the Sea-Fisheries (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, as I have said often enough, if they are caught, they do not even know how much they are going to be charged if they take a case? If they take a case, are they still going to have the points added to their licence afterwards?

I mentioned Patrick Murphy. With the indulgence of the Chairman, he might give me a few seconds to express my sincere sympathies to Patrick and his family on the death of his father, Danny Murphy, who had a serious accident a few days before his death. He was another great man of the sea. This is an upsetting enough time but I would like to express my sympathy to Patrick who has appeared before the committee on many occasions. The passing of his father in the past couple of weeks has been sad.

I will certainly be pressing this amendment. I plead with the Minister to consider our amendments. It looks like no amendments I, Deputy Mac Lochlainn and others will put forward will be agreed to.

Nobody was listening to us either 12 months ago, and we saw the disaster that led to with the shocking deal for Irish fishermen. It now looks like the only deal on the table is decommissioning, after a task force was set up to look at the future of Irish fishing. If that is the future for Irish fishing then the industry is damned.