Mr. Micheál O'Mahony:

There were various themes which arose in the questions. I do not want to generalise the questions but to pick recurring themes and that was certainly one. These points apply in parallel to the current system of criminal sanctions. They exist independently of those criminal sanctions. That is what is set out explicitly in the SI. That is a Government decision. It is the decision of the Department which wrote the SI, taking direct advice from the Attorney General's office on that specific matter. It is reasonable to question the validity of that approach. It is what is on the Statute Book. It has not been tested yet and is quite explicit.

By way of direct answer to the question posed initially by Senator Brian Ó Domhnaill as to how these points relate to the current criminal code, they exist in parallel. It may well be that the licence holder is at home in bed when the infringement occurs. Before the SI was put in place, the system was for the skipper potentially to face a criminal sanction for the infringement that occurred with the vessel. Now a further party, the licence holder, is brought into the sanctioning system. The reason that is the case is that there is an explicit obligation in the EU regulation which provides that the member state shall establish a points system to sanction the licence holder. They are brought into the loop explicitly by the EU regulations and this SI gives effect to that and the SFPA's statutory obligation is to implement the SI. I hope that answers the direct question about the separateness of the two processes.