Mr. Brendan Byrne:

I welcome the committee's interest in this Act because it is critical to the functioning of the entire industry. The entire industry depends on how this Act is implemented and applied across the board. The first thing the committee needs to look at is the Act itself. It was drafted at a time when Ireland focused on self-regulation with no oversight. We had similar Acts such as the Building Control Act and the Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Act and we all know how they worked out in the end. This Act needs to be looked at in the round as regards the type of legislation Ireland was drafting at the time. There have been numerous reports into the SFPA from the Wolfe report to the PriceWaterhouseCoopers report to the Moran report and they speak for themselves. There was a lot of change in Europe in terms of reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, CFP, in 2013. As a lot of reform and new implementing decisions are coming in terms of control and enforcement, now is the correct time to reopen this Act that I deem to be flawed legislation from the outset. Previous speakers talked about the need for administrative sanctions and fines and for it to be proportionate across the board and the need to move away from everything being based on criminality. That simply does not stack up.

From a processor's point of view, we already have administrative sanctions and fines from the SFPA when it comes to food safety because the SFPA deals with control and enforcement and food regulation. One half of the house has administrative fines and sanctions and the other half is based solely on criminality. That does not stack up and we need to look at that. It is critical for the industry that this Act is reopened and re-examined and is fit for purpose because it has never been fit for purpose.