Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister of State. I have a couple of questions of my own. Part of the rationale behind this meeting is to challenge the Minister of State, mandate him and charge him to go to these sets of negotiations regarding Norway and other third states, but also to the December Council, and for the first time in my reading of these things have an assertive and ambitious approach to these negotiations, because I think that has been lacking to date. Certainly, anybody looking at the results of those negotiations could only conclude the same thing. There needs to be an all-of-government approach. The Minister of State needs the backing of his colleagues in government, including the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, and the wider Cabinet in this regard. To go into these negotiations solely talking about fisheries is not going to work.

The European Union as an institution and the member states that comprise it have a bad habit of seeing Ireland as a soft touch, a huge maritime resource that is there to be taken and that we cannot even see or count all of. We need all of Government to back the Irish State in the positions the Minister of State has outlined in terms of these negotiations. It will be a real test of this Government. We have heard a lot in other debates about neutrality, sovereignty and the rest but this will be a real test of how serious the Government as a whole is about sovereignty.

When it comes to the gross overfishing of pelagic species by the states I have already mentioned, particularly Norway, Faroe Islands and Iceland but also by our nearest neighbour in Britain, there is a question of EU enforcement. Deputy Mac Lochlainn raised this issue earlier and was quite correct to do so. This is overfishing not necessarily by states but by corporate actors, many of which trade extensively not just with the European Union but also inside the Union. Many of them have shareholders or are headquartered within the European Union. While the vessels they operate might have the flags of other nations on them, they are European Union operations. Where are the EU enforcement mechanisms in terms of corporate enforcement, environmental protection and sea fisheries enforcement? What is the Government saying to the European Commission and other member states?

The next point is in relation to our own sea fisheries protection capabilities. At different times in the history of the State, there has been what we could call close-contact policing. Governments, and invariably Ministers for justice, in response to gangland crime in Dublin, for example, decided to engage in close-contact policing where those involved in criminality would not have the opportunity to do so because the State would be so close to them and so watchful. Quota might be allocated, because we have to assume that history is not going to change in December and that we might not get all that we want in these negotiations although I hope to God we do and I wish the Minister of State well. We are coming to a point in our waters that we should have a system where our well-resourced, very capable Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority is engaging with these vessels, inspecting them and boarding them. We need to do that at the very least. We know what quota they are allocated but God knows what is being taken from those waters. It will concentrate minds ahead of the next December Council meeting if they see that Ireland is flexing muscles and being assertive. That is the step-change we need from the Minister of State and the Government.