Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)

I concur. Members of the angling fraternity feel they probably need stronger representation. With the disbanding of the Salmon Commission as part of this Bill, a serious debate is needed on the conservation of salmon stock. The debate has been of a one-way nature and has put the whole and collective blame on drift net and draft net fishermen. It has now been proven, even in the absence of drift and draft net fishermen. We need to have a serious debate as to why salmon stocks are not returning and why the larger populations of seals which are being reported are not being investigated. We need to examine what type of damage has been done to salmon stocks by seals. We need the Marine Institute to work closely with that.

We also need to take cognisance of something which I raised at the initial Stages of this Bill. The locks agency is becoming a bureaucratic monster. Every regulation it introduces has to go through London, Stormont and Dublin. It is becoming a very difficult piece of work, in terms of getting commonsense practice at a local level. We need to keep and eye on these things. More challenges will come down the track.

In Foyle, as the Minister of State is well aware, there are 18 drift net licences and 19 draft net licences. The fishermen concerned decided not to take a voluntary buy-out and decided, because of historic and traditional interests, to keep these licences. They are not destroying the salmon stocks compared to other possible reasons, such as pollution or the seal population. We need a debate on what we can do to try to protect them. We have completely banned drift and draft net fishing from our island.

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