Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy is in denial over the Scottish landings. He said there is no record of such landings, although I tell him that there is. It is fairly serious for the fishing industry here and for this country.

I wish to deal with the point about criminalising people and criminalising the fishing industry. As I said on Committee Stage, I never made a statement to the effect that everybody in the fishing industry is a criminal, neither did I say that most of them are, I said that some of them are. I am glad to say that if anything has changed over the course of this debate it is that everybody here and a number of people outside who began in denial, including the fisheries organisations, have now come to accept that there are criminals involved in this sector. They are robbing their fellow fishermen and we are trying to deal with them. At the beginning of this debate nobody accepted any of this. I was told that I was out of step with everybody else, but now everybody is in step with me on this.

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