Martin Ferris (Kerry North, Sinn Fein)

While the factor that has led to the current crisis in fishing and the decision to hold this debate is the impact of fuel cost increases, it is in reality the culmination of 35 years of deliberate mismanagement and neglect. Nor is it a coincidence that attention is being paid to this issue a week after the Irish people voted to reject any further surrender of power over our affairs to Brussels. If there was ever an example of an aspect of Irish life that has suffered from EU bureaucracy, it is the fishing sector. That was not lost by Irish coastal communities when they went to vote last Thursday. All our coastal communities in Kerry, Mayo, Galway, Donegal, north-east Dublin, Louth, Wexford, Waterford and west Cork decisively rejected the treaty.

We have recently seen Irish fishermen engaged in a series of protests from handing out free fish to massing in the bigger ports. The actions of people who are at the end of their tether and for whom the 40% increase in fuel costs, which means that many of them are operating at a loss, threatens to be the straw that breaks the camel's back. I commend the fishermen right across this island on their courage, determination and reasonableness. They did not embark lightly on the decision to block the ports, but they did it in a very respectful manner and allowed the Government an opportunity to negotiate to try to alleviate the situation.

However, this is only one in a long series of straws. Irish fishermen have been driven to the wall by successive attempts to scale down the sector here by all sorts of means, which are increasingly restrictive and unpredictable. The quota has been cut, the number of fishing days was reduced and legislation was introduced to criminalise fishermen despite the overwhelming opposition of the fisheries committee. All this added to the perception that the weight of the policing of fisheries has fallen on Irish fishermen rather than foreign fleets. That is encapsulated in the fact that Irish fishermen were arriving back to port to be inspected by shore based fisheries staff who until recently had not the means to go to sea to monitor foreign boats. This is akin to a supermarket employing security staff to wait outside someone's house until he or she comes home with the shopping while giving the shoplifters free range.

Someone remarked recently on the popularity of small fish in Spain where they are considered a great delicacy. These are fish that could only have been caught illegally within EU waters. It hardly takes a genius to figure out where many if not most of these illegal catches come from. More than all these things, which are merely the straws threatening to break the camel's back, the current crisis is the direct result of decades of mismanagement and neglect, dating from the surrender of our fisheries to Brussels in 1973.

We have heard much about what we have received from the EU in CAP and Structural Fund payments but very little of the fact that other EU states have taken much more than that in the value of fish taken from Irish waters and more importantly the loss to the Irish economy this represents. The 2004 estimate of the catch by the Irish fleet in waters around our coast indicated that it amounted to 15% of total fish caught. Within the area under EU jurisdiction it was only 28%. It is the equivalent of having 85% of our agricultural land in the hands of foreign landowners who export it raw to their own countries without one cent of benefit to the Irish people, a situation that pertained in Ireland with land until the Land War of the 1880s forced them off the backs of the Irish people. In the same year it was estimated by the Marine Institute that the value of the catch in surrounding waters was €800 million, of which €460 million was taken in the EU zone. The institute stated, however, that the value of international landings was most likely an underestimate. Indeed, it could be more accurately described as a guess.

Combined with the fact that this does not take into account the level of illegal fishing by foreign vessels, believed to be at least a third of the legal catch, and the fact that by 2004 the level of fishing had shown a steep decline from earlier years, we are talking about billions of euro of fish in today's values being taken from our waters by non-Irish vessels. That is only the unprocessed value and does not take into account the value and opportunities lost to a domestic processing and export sector had successive Governments since the foundation of the State not neglected the fishing industry and then surrendered it to Brussels.

There are no reliable figures, not least because very few want to face up to the grim reality. In 2004, however, the EU's statistical agency EUROSTAT, provided figures that showed that the accumulated processed value of fish taken in Irish waters between 1974 and 2004 was approximately €200 billion. In the same period we received €40 billion in total transfer funds, including CAP and Structural Fund payments.

Some 40% of edible fish within the EU is caught in Irish waters and Irish fishermen are entitled to catch only a small proportion of that. What sense does that make? Lest anyone think that Sinn Féin and others have only being saying this of late, we made the same point in 1972 and indeed it was discussed in the United Irishman newspaper in the early 1960s when the vast potential offered by the fishing industry was pointed out. There is a marked difference between the neglect of the industry here and how the Norwegians built a thriving economy on fisheries before they discovered oil. While they were building a thriving domestic processing and export industry and turning what was regarded as one of the most underdeveloped countries in Europe into a prosperous nation, we were failing to invest or include fishing as part of the plans for economic development.

Then when its value was recognised by EU bureaucrats, when Ireland was in the process of joining the EEC in the early 1970s, someone decided it would be a good idea to basically hand it over. On RTE's "Seascapes" website there is an interesting report on the programme maker's visit to Spain:

The extent of their fishing/seafood industry shows what we have lost by the inane stupidity of successive Irish Governments. The most culpable are those who negotiated away our fishing rights and on whom a heavy burden of blame should rest. We have lost economically and socially as a result.

We are paying the price to the present day. Maybe at last we will recognise this, something that is privately admitted even by officials within the sector, and demand that the disastrous Common Fisheries Policy is completely overhauled. If it is not and if we are content to allow the EU to dictate the future of our fisheries, all that awaits the industry is a slow death. If the Government is merely going to tinker around and hope that a temporary solution to the current crisis can be averted, it would do just as well to allow the fuel costs to take their toll and let the fishermen go to the wall because that is the inevitable consequence of the way the sector is being managed at the present time.

I want, also, to refer to the huge anger that exists among fishermen and their families, and indeed the entire coastal communities, regarding attempts to criminalise them. An entire section of the Criminal Justice Act is devoted to fishermen. It includes sections allowing fisheries protection officers to enter private homes and seize documents and computers. No other profession or trade in the State has been given such attention. This is a State where unregulated private airports and private aeroplanes have been at the centre of massive drug importations. It is good to see that the former Minister had his priorities right.

If that was not sufficient, the former Minister used the word "traitors" to describe those he claimed were the target of the legislation. In reality, the only traitors in the true sense of the word were those who bargained and sold our fisheries in 1972. They betrayed Irish fishermen and the Irish people.

In 2006 we had the Sea Fisheries Bill which introduced criminal penalties on fishermen. It was opposed in this Chamber and in committee by Deputies on all sides, but of course Government Deputies and the Independents who supported them meekly supported the Bill when it came to a vote. A shameful act was done by Members of this House and the Sea Fisheries Bill in criminalising decent hard-working people who risk their lives on a daily basis for their communities and families.

The demonisation and criminalisation was wrong. We argued on Committee Stage and in the Chamber that ministerial sanction was the way to go for lighter offences. However, the then Minister decided he was going to have his way and proceeded with this form of criminalisation.

In the Minister of State's speech he mentioned the objectives of the producers, fishermen, wholesalers, distributors and processors to ensure the markets supplied are fully aware of the communities from which Irish fishermen supply the domestic market, and I welcome that. We need to see the unification of all sectors, not just fishermen and producers. By doing this, we can maximise the value of catches to fishermen and control seafood imports that are undermining our native industry. I have been informed reliably that scallops from Peru are being imported every week through Cork Airport. This use of Ireland as a backdoor into the EU means these scallops are being sold as Irish with no labelling to suggest the opposite.

The Minister referred to decommissioning of the fishing fleet which I believe is a terrible indictment of the State. People are being put out of their livelihoods, not just the boat-owners but the skippers and the crews. Decommissioning will mean nothing to the skippers and crews. They will be dependent on the boat-owner as to whether they receive any compensation. Many of these men have been fishing since they were 20 years of age. They now find themselves in their 60s, knowing no other skill but fishing. They will receive no redundancy package or any compensation. I hope the Minister will not forget this aspect.

The kernel of the problem in the fishing sector is the lack of an adequate quota. There is no political will to tackle the EU to gain a sufficient quota to enable our fishing industry to survive and prosper. I am not satisfied enough is being done in that regard. It is to easy to claim it cannot be renegotiated but it can be, the very same as we will renegotiate the Lisbon treaty. If we do not, what is left of our coastal communities will be destroyed. They were once vibrant communities but now they are in a most depressed state.

It took guts and courage for the fishing sector to blockade the ports recently to secure a debate in the Dáil. These statements would not have been taken if the fishermen had not done so. I applaud them for it. I stand with them because they have taken the right approach to getting a meeting with the Minister and Minister of State. I hope the fishermen will not have to blockade ports again to get justice. They are entitled to justice, the same as anyone else. They were betrayed and sold out by the State and the then Government in 1973 when Ireland entered the EEC. Their industry was compromised for other interests. They deserve the recognition and entitlements that every other citizen enjoys.

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