Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

I welcome Report Stage of this Bill and look forward to its progress to the Seanad. It has been beneficial to examine the import of the legislation at length on Committee Stage and prior to that in our committee meetings. The main conclusion I have drawn in this debate concerns the need for an effective enforcement system. The hunter gatherer instinct is a healthy impulse in humankind, something that has been beneficial and even essential to us. Fishing, moreover, is an honourable tradition and a livelihood beneficial to society. It is also a dangerous occupation in which major risks must be taken.

There is now, however, a recognition that there are limits to what we can take. The need for an effective enforcement system is recognised even by the fishing industry itself because the lack of enforced limits has led to a situation where fisherman can see that future fishing stocks are threatened. While there is a strong impulse in the short term to partake proudly of one's work on the high seas, there is a recognition from the fishing community that there will be no stocks left if fishing activity is not regulated. Instead of hunting and gathering, we will be sitting in empty piers bemoaning our lack of foresight and wisdom. We all, therefore, agree on the need for a good control system.

I am sure all Members agree that in the case of a minor offence, it would be preferable to impose an administrative fine rather then hauling the perpetrator to court. I was satisfied on Committee Stage to support amendments which set out this principle. It was articulated clearly on Committee Stage, however, that in taking such a line, we must consider in more detail what constitutes a minor offence. In allowing for administrative sanctions, we must not breach what I contend is the fundamental first principle in what we are trying to achieve, the necessity of preserving future stocks for everybody's benefit. Any offence which can be shown not to have an adverse effect in this regard should be considered suitable for administrative sanction. I commend the Deputies who have put forward amendments in this regard.

Deputy Broughan set out in detail the legal principles in regard to administrative sanctions. The two amendments which deal with the specifics as to how such a system would work in terms of the offences that apply and so on are those of Deputies Perry and Ferris. In regard to Deputy Perry's amendment No. 23, which has clearly been extensively thought out by Fine Gael, I am concerned there may be a move in the direction of creating an even more complicated legal system. This might almost require a completely separate Bill because the definition of fines and offences seems to be expanded rather than tightened.

I commend Deputy Ferris's amendment No. 51. It is a progression on his original table. I had concerns about that on Committee Stage in that what were described as minor offences seemed to me nevertheless to be offences at the heart of the system. The failure to make an entry in a logbook is not a minor offence but is at the heart of a corrupt system. If the control system is based on a logbook recording procedure and it is easy because of the nature of that logbook system or there is such a temptation for a skipper to fail to fill in the logbook correctly, to record a landing correctly or to keep the monitoring system working so that the Naval Service knows where he is, there is incredible incentive to fishermen to break these regulations and we end up with what has been the position which is open fishing and the over-exploitation of stocks.

Deputy Ferris's new amendment brings the focus down to the case of smaller catch values. I have a number of concerns about that. First, this brings us into an area of difficult legal definition in terms of the values of catch and the nature of the offences concerned. A second concern is that the need for the management of the stocks is possibly even more important in our smaller inshore fisheries, to which this level of fines would apply, than it is in our deep sea fisheries, although the latter is probably doing greater damage in terms of the hauls that can be taken.

Whatever about competing against a fishing vessel from a different nation, if one is lobster potting or working on the inshore fisheries and competing against one's neighbour, if there is an incentive for people try to get away with landing a catch that is not properly recorded, or not following the right procedures, or not using the right net, this is an area where we need even tighter enforcement. We must have proper and accurate policing of our inshore fisheries because otherwise neighbour will doubt neighbour which is worse than our fishermen doubting the activities of a foreign vessel. Such a scenario brings difficulties at local level.

While the detail in the table in Deputy Ferris's amendment is an improvement and a refinement on the previous one, I am not convinced that examples such as failure to complete a landing declaration as per regulations leading to a fine of 20% of the value of the catch on board is a sufficient deterrent to a person who might consider failing to give a landing declaration. If one fails on any point in the chain of reporting and control, one leaves the opportunity open to a person who may be tempted to breach the regulations. The lack of political will to ensure we have a proper enforcement system has caused the problem the fishing industry more than any other group is now facing. It is the small things we need to get right.

I do not have details of the legal case to which Deputy Broughan referred in terms of Whitby. I stand to be corrected on my interpretation of it which I gathered from what I read briefly in the newspapers. That case highlighted that while an offence may be minor, and while no one wants to criminalise a fleet, the reality is that where it seems that everyone has to do something because the system itself is not properly enforced is a very good indication of what the problem is. That case is not one I would see as just a small matter of over-fishing that was then criminalised and the offender was brought to court. That offence was an indictment of the system in that everyone involved had to be engaged in it. The further indictment is that in the North Seas which has been utterly over-fished there is an example, perhaps slightly a few years ahead of us in terms of where we are going, unless we have proper enforcement. It may be that an individual case is minor but the overall effect where a multitude of individual minor offences are occurring is that there is no fishing left and that the fleet is left high and dry.

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