Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

In response to an earlier question, the Minister of State assured the House that there is, as much as possible and practicable, a proper control system in place. I assure him that almost everyone involved in this business agrees that there is an utter lack of control in fisheries management, that there is, in effect, an utterly corrupt regime where it is impossible for the Naval Service to ascertain the individual quota for a boat and therefore police the system. In effect, there is open fishing. In those circumstances, is that any surprise?

I want to hear the Minister of State's response to this country's marine scientists, who at an Oireachtas committee last week made the remarkable statement that the figures for the system — the TACs and quotas — are plucked from thin air because no one believes the landing figures given that the system is untenable.

Rather than the Minister of State coming here today and stating it is not possible to fix that fundamental flaw in the system and to even approach Brussels and say that we have a serious problem here, and rather than saying that due to complex difficulties we cannot have real time quotas, I want to know what the Minister will do. Will he continue to be the only person to claim that this system is working when if one talks to any honest fisherman, anyone in the science community or anyone who knows anything about this, they state that this is a corrupt, uncontrollable system? What will the Minister of State do about it?

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