Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North, Fine Gael)

I am very magnanimous in this House. Definitely, the three vessels in question are both unsafe and uneconomical at this stage, as I am sure the Minister of State will agree. As he says, the useful life of a ship is 30 years. Will he agree these vessels are totally inadequate to police our 132,000 square miles of water, from a fishery viewpoint, and we have EU obligations to patrol our entire fishery ground, which is up to 200 miles offshore? We are not doing that adequately since we do not have the capacity for it. That is why as well as replacing these vessels we should add to our flotilla as well. Apart from the objective of eight in the flotilla are there plans for any additional vessels, smaller faster ones, as Deputy Finian McGrath said, that could enter coves and be very good for detecting drug shipments, which apparently are coming into Ireland virtually on a daily basis and we just cannot intercept them?

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