Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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I was going to pick up on the issue Deputy Mac Lochlainn raised. It strikes me that this overfishing and wanton destruction of a sovereign natural resource of the Irish people taking place off our west and north coasts is to the detriment of 17,000 jobs and a way of life in living communities, to enrich shareholders, many of whom are based in the European Union. Many of these operations might have flags of other countries on their vessels but they are based within the European Union. It begs the question: where is the European Fisheries Control Agency? Where is the European Environment Agency? Where is the corporate enforcement authority of the European Union? Where is the EU response? The Irish Government also has to take a level of responsibility. We will have the Minister of State here and we will be having very forthright conversations with him, sending him to Brussels with a very clear mandate to come back with something and to take a very firm line on this. The European Union has a huge number of questions to answer. Has it the bottle to address this issue? Has it the interest to address it? By God, we as a nation, we as a people, need to force them into that. We need to hold them to account and ensure they are doing something. I hope to God that, when the Minister of State goes to the December Council meeting he will bring that strong message from the witnesses as fisheries representatives, from us as committee members, and from this committee as a whole. I thank Mr. Byrne for responding to that. It is really important. It is a really good and important set of questions, and it is really heartening to hear his response.