Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)

A Deputy stated nothing has been done but within a week of arriving in the Department I received a letter from a man whose name is familiar to everyone in the House to tell me about illegal activities in the fishing industry. I immediately decided the allegations were serious enough to merit bringing them to the attention of the Garda, which we did. The Garda has since followed up the allegations and, I understand, uncovered other matters. The Garda Síochána is preparing cases in that respect. When the Marine Institute reported to the Department some months ago a discrepancy between the log books of certain vessels and their actual catch, we told it to report the matter to the Commission and the Garda. The Garda Síochána is pursuing the matter.

For those who persist in saying there is no problem or a range of minor mistakes and technical breaches I reiterate that 111 vessels were reported by the Marine Institute, 36 of which had no logs of landing fish. The remaining vessels had under-reported quota species by a factor of six to eight and over-reported non-quota species by a factor of three to four. This matter was immediately brought to the attention of the Garda. I hope my statistics are right but if they are wrong I will return to the issue.

Whenever an issue arose, the sea fisheries officers of the various areas were active. I will not accept the criticism from across the floor of the House that the sea fisheries officers have been doing nothing in this regard. They have detained vessels, issued warnings and prepared and are preparing cases, a number of which are with the Attorney General.

I will give Opposition Members the details of a sampling programme in which 117 trips involving observers on boats in the period 2003-04 were recorded. A comparison between the official national landings and the observed catches by the Marine Institute shows the catch levels of monkfish, which Deputies know is the key economic quota species, are between six and eight times the levels nationally recorded and reported to the European Commission. The levels recorded for cod and hake are two to four times greater than the landings declared. Other species without quotas or with under-quotas placed on them were over-recorded. The figure is higher as 31 of the 117 trips were not recorded in any of the official landings. That is the level of difficulty in the fishing industry.

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