Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I broadly welcome the Bill. As has been said, it updates the 1955 Act and seeks to streamline and centralise the registration system, which, up until now, was more fragmented with multiple registers and registrars. It is right and proper that it should be updated and streamlined and that we should have a proper system for registration and flagging which is coherent and transparent. This is important for many reasons but probably the reason that should concern us most relates to health and safety. We know that shipping and sailing is a dangerous business. Lives are lost regularly. Pollution is also a major issue in shipping and sailing. Therefore, to have a system whereby ships are registered and flagged properly and so on and to have a proper inspection regime to ensure ships are up to uniform standards is very important. For all these reasons I welcome the legislation. Similarly, extending the registration process to jet skis of a certain size seems to be a reasonable measure for the same reasons of ensuring safety, proper standards and so on.

Broadly speaking I welcome the Bill. It gives an opportunity to raise other issues although I am unsure whether they could have been dealt with in this Bill. Anyway, the Bill gives an opportunity, perhaps, to refer to them. I am referring in particular to the issue of flags of convenience. It is one thing for us to have a proper registration and flagging system, but we are in a globalised world and one feature of globalisation - it reminds me of multinationals and their journey throughout the world to avoid tax - and a major feature of shipping today, whether transport shipping or cruise shipping, is to flag or register vessels in several places. Coincidentally, in many cases these are the same places where multinational firms go to avoid tax such as the Bahamas, Panama or Liberia, places that have open registers. Many of the ships on the seas throughout the world flag themselves in these open-register countries even though really they have no connection whatsoever with those countries. This is a mechanism through which cruise companies and cargo shipping companies essentially avoid a proper system of regulation. The consequences are, in many cases, quite disastrous in terms of the safety of the ships, the safety of the crews of those ships and the conditions of employment of the crews of those ships. Furthermore, it is often disastrous in terms of pollution because of accidents, dumping and various consequences that flow from the fact that these ships are not properly regulated as a result of this system of flags of convenience.

In my reading around this Bill, I studied some data from the International Transport Workers Federation, the international union representing ship crews throughout the world. The federation monitors and is campaigning vigorously on this business. It is rather shocking and startling how many accidents have resulted because of this system of flags of convenience. This comes back to a point that connects to my area of Dún Laoghaire. Many of the big cruise liners operate under this system. For example, the figures I have are a little old but the International Transport Workers Federation has suggested that 59% of all cruise ship passengers in the world are American and 26% are European. They make up the vast bulk of passengers of cruise ships and these are the places to which these cruise liners are connected. Fully 52% of the capacity carrying passengers came from two open registers, those of Liberia and Panama.

Their business lies largely in Europe and America. They account for a disproportionate number of accidents, pollution incidents and breaches of working time and health and safety regulations. Often, such breaches contribute to accidents and, in some cases, sinkings, major spills, etc. Many ships on the world's seas register in this way to avoid proper regulation, with serious consequences.

Flag-of-convenience ships comprise two thirds of all ocean pollution cases cited by the US Coast Guard. According to the International Transport Workers' Federation, known as the ITF, at least 2,200 seafarers die each year at sea, and crews of flag-of-convenience ships are more than twice as likely to be killed on the job. Of the world's top six transport fleets, five are on open registers - Panama, Liberia, the Bahamas, Cyprus and Malta. Often, the disproportionate number of accidents, oil spills and deaths for which they account is a result of how they treat their crews, in that they make people work dangerously excessive hours, leaving them unable to man their ships properly. This is not something that the Irish Government can resolve, but all governments have a responsibility to work together to do something about it. I am not entirely sure how that can be done, but it must involve a better inspection regime in every country. Regardless of how a ship is flagged or registered, there must be a robust and rigorous inspection regime to ensure that ships meet proper standards and crews are treated properly and not exploited.

Some Deputies mentioned the Port of Waterford. I know quite a few people in Waterford and have heard of numerous cases of ships arriving with crews from Eastern Europe or Africa who claimed to not have been paid wages in months. The shipowners had disappeared over the horizon and the crews needed to occupy their ships to force the situation. Sometimes the ships have been sold to recompense the workers, but those people were often left in difficult situations because of flag-of-convenience shipowners who were trying to get around having their operations regulated properly. If we are discussing matters such as registration and flagging and the standards that should be associated with these, we must consider how we can play some part in addressing this significant problem.

To connect this with a slightly parochial concern, one of the main ambitions of the management of the Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company is to replace its declining ferry business with business from cruise liners. I wonder whether those cruise liners are likely to be from the same companies that are cited time and again by the ITF for flying flags of convenience, flouting health and safety standards left, right and centre and being the subject of many complaints over the conditions to which they subject their crews. Chances are, they are. The cruise business is dominated by a relatively small number of large, wealthy companies, most of which operate under the flag of convenience system and are more likely to be guilty of the infringements to which I referred, including dumping that can be dangerous to the environment. Anywhere there is a port that can be visited by such ships, we should have a proper inspection regime to ensure that they are up to standard and workers are not being exploited. I am making this suggestion for the Minister's consideration. Perhaps he could insert a provision in this or another Bill so that Ireland might play some role.

We should consider the ITF's campaign objectives. It is campaigning for a major assault on substandard shipping. It wants acceptable standards on all ships irrespective of flag and the use of all political, industrial and legal means at governments' disposal to ensure this is achieved. We should be 100% behind these objectives. If we cannot enhance employment conditions, we should at least ensure there is proper regulation of same. All maritime workers, regardless of colour, nationality, sex or creed, should be protected from exploitation by their employers or those acting on their employers' behalf. We must consider this matter seriously, given the evidence that shipowners operating internationally - possibly the majority of them - are actively seeking to get around compliance with environmental, employment and health and safety regulations.

Several Deputies used this Bill on merchant shipping as an opportunity to discuss ports, but I will make a general point. One of my great inspirations in politics was Dr. John De Courcy Ireland, who the House may remember died a number of years ago. He was a great socialist and anti-war activist, but his greatest passion of all was maritime affairs, having been a sailor for much of his life. He was from the Dún Laoghaire area. He used to tell me that it was bizarre, absurd and tragic that Ireland, an island nation, did not have a merchant navy following the closure of Irish Shipping. I will use this opportunity to echo his sentiment, which he was forever repeating. There is a relationship between the subject of my previous points and the decline of merchant navies, whereby a state took direct responsibility for bringing goods in and out of its territory from other parts of the world.

That also meant that there was better regulation of standards on those ships, treatment of employees and all of that, something from which nation states have pulled back. The "for profit" private mob have moved in and they seek to flout all sorts of standards because they are only interested in making money, regardless of the potential environmental consequences or consequences for the crews or passengers of ships. Even in terms of employment opportunities, if we are talking about having a sustainable economy and recovery, I do not understand why we would not have our own merchant navy and see that as being an economic opportunity for our State that is an island surrounded by water. Is it not logical and obvious that we should have our own merchant navy?

My final point is a parochial one about Dún Laoghaire, as I noted that other Members spoke about ports in their constituencies. I am aware a reclassification of ports is taking place in terms of ports of national and regional significance, how they will be managed and so on. Dún Laoghaire Port is part of that reclassification of ports and it has been designated as a port of regional significance and is to be put under the auspices of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. I very much welcome the fact that Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company will come under the authority of a directly elected body and that the people in Dún Laoghaire can have some real influence and say in how their harbour is developed in the future because that has been distinctly lacking in how the harbour has been managed in recent years by the Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company which is a law unto itself. That has been evident when I have asked questions of the Minister about very serious issues such as big disputes going on and legal cases between the management and employees about major issues of health and safety within the port because of the run down in the numbers of maintenance staff and harbour police working in the harbour, which poses very serious questions in terms of health and safety. There are regular suicide attempts in Dún Laoghaire Harbour and often they are only prevented because of the actions of the harbour police whose numbers have been drastically and dangerously run down by the harbour company. There are also major issues about the expenditure decisions of Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company where hundreds of thousands of euro - probably close to €1 million if one takes checks back on recent years - have been spent on crazy, fantastic master plans for almost Disney-type development plans for Dún Laoghaire Harbour of the sort we have seen with the Dún Laoghaire library, the same kind of madcap plans for huge inappropriate developments in the centre of the harbour when the harbour company would be far better investing that money in making it a safe, working and accessible harbour for the public rather than wasting vast amounts of money on consultants, developing plans that never come to fruition anyway. The most recent of these is a plan to buy a floating barge from the Germans for €3 million and build a nonsense-type structure halfway down the east pier for it when in fact everybody in Dún Laoghaire would say they do not need a floating barge with a pool on it in the harbour and all that money to be spent when what they would like is to have Dún Laoghaire baths fixed up, but the harbour company is a law unto itself.

While I welcome the decision for the port to come under the auspices of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, which provides the potential for an elected body to have an influence, there is a big decision about whether it would be a corporate subsidiary of the county council or it would be under the direct control of it and its elected members. I appeal to the Minister that in making that decision it would be the latter and not the former. A corporate subsidiary would just replicate and continue a situation where the body is at one remove from any accountability either to the Department or to the local community through its public representatives.

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