Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)

Yesterday in Galway Circuit Court a fisherman was charged with fishing over the quota to the value of €2,000. He was duly fined €5,000, but the penalty did not stop there because that offence attracts an automatic confiscation of the catch and gear. That is where the real penalty arose. His catch and gear were valued at €19,000. On paper, that fisherman was fined, quite properly, a sum of €5,000 but the hidden kick or penalty was the automatic confiscation of his catch and gear.

I am not complaining about the decision of the judge. He had no discretion because automatic confiscation is written into the law, a law we are copperfastening in this Bill. To make matters worse, the ridiculous anomaly is that if that fisherman had not been Irish, the automatic confiscation would not have happened. Does it make any sense for us to retain such a ridiculous anomaly in a Bill which is totally discriminatory vis-a-vis Irish fishermen? I know of nobody in this House who will stand up and support the retention of that ridiculous anomaly. Why is it in the Bill? I want an absolute commitment that the ridiculous anomaly will be removed.

I want to move on to other, more serious aspects of this Bill. Examination of the relevant figures shows that under Irish legislation fishermen are fined amounts by the courts that are ten times those payable on conviction by their continental counterparts. That approach is continued in this Bill but who wants it? Nobody stands up on either the Government or Opposition side to support it. It is there because we have not decriminalised minor offences as has happened on the Continent. I, the Fine Gael Party, the Opposition and, I venture, virtually all Members of Fianna Fáil except the Cabinet Minister want a change in the system to provide for graded administrative sanctions for minor offences. Everybody wants sustainable fisheries and we must have sanctions for breaches of the law but let us not put our fishermen to the wall and sink them beneath the waves because we are not prepared to change a system which is totally out of sync with the needs of the industry.

I suggest the Minister of State at the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Gallagher, brings a message to the Government that we will support any reasonable regime for sea fisheries but will oppose from the trenches a move to continue such discrimination and ridiculous penalties against fishermen. I believe the Minister of State will be happy to do so because his presentation of the Bill did not laud the continuation of those anomalies.

The only person who is in favour is the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Noel Dempsey. I have not seen him in the House and I challenge him to come in to defend these ridiculous anomalies. He might say there would be legal problems in making such changes but Article 29 of the Constitution enables those problems to be overcome. Precedents exist in other areas where administrative sanctions are applied. The Minister may say they can only be applied with the consent of the defendant. I accept that but let us give the defendant the option to have it dealt with at administrative level and pay his fine like his counterpart on the Continent without incurring the enormous expenses of engaging solicitors or barristers to go to the Circuit Court, and without facing the automatic confiscation of his catching gear.

Let us have a reasonable system. How often do we have to drum this message home? Withdraw the Bill and recast it to provide for administrative and graded sanctions so that the punishment fits the offence and it will have the support of the Opposition. If not it will have to go through in the teeth of opposition from this side of the House and, I venture, with a silent mutiny of Members on the Government side. Any such Members I have spoken to trenchantly oppose these provisions. I appreciate their difficulties with Government Whips and I do not challenge them on that issue but 90% of Members of this House want the Bill to be changed and the House is meant to represent the will of the people. It is the Parliament not just of the Irish fisherman but of the Irish people. Give the representatives of the Irish people a chance to bring about a situation where this important Bill, representing an important part of our economy, is one of which we can all be happy and proud. This is the one chance to do that.

The Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Noel Dempsey, must ask who is in favour of this Bill apart from himself. There have already been interventions from the Fianna Fáil chairman of the relevant committee. Clearly the members of that committee, of all parties, do not support these provisions. In that situation does Parliament count for anything? The pigheaded Minister, who does not have much fisheries expertise in his constituency over and above a few good rivers, supports the provisions while the rest of Parliament wants them changed. Let the voice of Parliament and the people prevail so we end up with a satisfactory Bill the terms of which fishermen will be prepared to operate fully, fairly and effectively. If we can achieve that we will have done a good day's work.

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