Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister and the Minister of State for being here for a critical debate at a critical time for the Irish fishing industry. It is important that the House has an opportunity to address these issues before the meeting of the Council of Ministers in order to put down markers in respect of those important negotiations. I am under no illusions and neither, I am sure, is the Minister, after his day-long meeting with the Federation of Irish Fishermen on what is expected in the outcome.

I wish to read some of the content of an e-mail which I received from the wife of a fisherman. More articulately than any of us could attempt, it summarises the plight of the fishing industry at the moment:

Dear Michael,

I am a fisherman's wife and I am writing to you to highlight the desperate situation we are all in that has led to our husbands having to stoop to the measures that they have over the past couple of days. I don't have an agenda, I am just trying to save our livelihood, home etc.

My husband has owned his own boat for the past 10 years, we remortgaged our home and took out a marine mortgage to buy the boat and have NEVER received a penny in grants or anything else from the State. Up until the start of the year we were employing 5 men + my husband all of whom are completely tax compliant. . . We have had to cut this back to 4 due to our worsening financial position.

My husband has a completely clear record, in 10 years he has never even been cautioned never mind committed an offence, Fishing is a stressful and dangerous job and stress is being added to profoundly by the inclusion of fisheries offences in the Criminal Justice Bill as a criminal offence. The lads are living in dread of one of the inspectors finding some clerical error that could end with them with a criminal record. The Dept of Marine regularly makes mistakes (we have gotten licenses with incorrect numbers on them etc.) that are just ignored but when the shoe is on the other foot it is a criminal offence!

We haven't taken wages ourselves out of the boat for the past 3 months — the money just isn't there and the lads have seen their wages almost halved due to the high price of fuel. The boat was at sea for 10 days on its last trip (240 hours away from family and friends for the crew) and for this they got 725 euro per man before tax — i.e. 3 euros per hour.

. . .Someone made a dreadful mess of the quotas this year which has left a lot of the boats in a really bad way. They left the cod quota open in January and February and boats that wouldn't normally land much cod landed hundreds of tonnes of very low quality cod which crashed the prices on the traditional cod fishermen and left little or no quota for the rest of the year. We calculated the loss from dumping non-quota fish over the side and it worked out at €250 per man on the last trip. When you are earning as little as these guys now are it must be soul destroying to look at that sort of money disappearing back over the side. This mismanagement of the quota is a disgrace.

Ireland has the largest share of European waters yet has the smallest most underdeveloped fleet and the least amount of quota of all the EU nations.

The Government have also introduced a new safety survey that all boats have to undergo. We [recently] attended a conference with the people who will be carrying out this survey on behalf of the Government and they gave an indication that even modern boats (less than 10 years old) would have to invest in excess of €100,000 to meet the very exacting standards that have been set for Irish boats . . . I don't know where they think that money is going to come from but I can tell you there isn't a bank in Ireland that will give a loan to a fishing boat at the moment.

The e-mail outlines some of the demands with which the Minister is familiar. They include demands for additional quota; a tie-up scheme similar to the set-aside scheme for farmers — that would work better than any quotas; an investment scheme from the Government in fuel-efficiency measures; a review of the criminal justice legislation to remove fishing offences and consider them as they are considered in other EU countries; a reduction in the duty on fuel; and a diversion of some of the effort being put into inspecting 100% of Irish vessels towards the inspection of foreign boats. The correspondent concludes as follows: "Sorry this has been so long winded but at this stage I am desperate for someone to understand that we are not just being disruptive about the price of fuel — we are in real crisis!" This correspondence summarises what is happening Irish fishermen on the high seas more eloquently than any I have seen to date.

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