Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have just read back over the comments made by the Minister before he took up the post of Minister. At that time he was very critical of the Department and the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, SFPA. The big issue for him then was the balance of probability. The current approach in the statutory instrument deals with the balance of probability rather than having to prove beyond doubt, which is normally the case where a criminal sanction is being pursued. At that point he was very much on the same page on which I am now and he clearly understood that this is a serious issue.

The amendment is a good one in that if a person has been successful in his or her appeal then penalty points should not be assigned. I would love to get a comparison. I have seen a document, which I referred to during committee meetings on pre-legislative scrutiny, that compared the implementation of penalty points across the European Union. Again, I put it to the Minister that I am not aware, but I could be wrong and I am happy to be proven wrong, of anywhere in the European Union where there is the potential for a person to lose their livelihood with a threshold of the balance of probabilities. Indeed - and the Minister has talked about the fact that administrative law and criminal law run parallel with each other - one can take action if one feels it is serious enough in the criminal law system. If a person wins his or her appeal then that would not lead to his or her points being removed.

This is a good amendment and I ask the Minister to return to the spirit that he demonstrated a couple of years ago on this issue. At that time he was entirely right in his assessment and criticised the Department in the approach that it had taken at that time, and he said that its approach was a bad reflection on the Department. I ask that the Minister accepts the amendment as it refers to natural justice in terms of the penalty points. The Minister asked about the policy of Sinn Féin. These points concern natural justice and should not be the subject of debate but, unfortunately, in this country fishermen are seen to be fair game, which is a situation that has been allowed to go on for too long.