Dáil debates

Thursday, 1 February 2018

Island Fisheries (Heritage Licence) Bill 2017: Second Stage [Private Members]

 

2:40 pm

Photo of Martin FerrisMartin Ferris (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This year, I will have been in this House for 16 years and, to be honest, there is an awful lot of bull and waffle here. However, this Bill, which was conceived in 2012 with the report of the committee chaired by Deputy Andrew Doyle, is one of the better things with which I have been associated.

In 2012, the Minister of State and the committee members were quite startled by the decline in the population of our rural communities and, in particular, our islands. Our all-party objective at the time was to try to do something to reverse it and to address the socioeconomic challenges facing our rural communities, including the island communities. As a result, we had to rely on other reports. There was a 2009 report relating to a review of fisheries on Ireland's offshore islands and sustaining island livelihoods as well as a report on Gaeltacht islands. Irrespective of whether they were Gaeltacht islands or English-speaking islands, it is quite clear that there was a historical dependence in offshore island communities on fishing as part of their livelihood. This had dried up and a source of employment and income was taken from them.

The joint sub-committee on fisheries was established in December 2012 and it commenced its detailed work in 2013 which culminated in a report on promoting sustainable rural, coastal and island communities. As the Minister of State is aware, during that period we met on eight occasions in public and on nine occasions in private with various group from a wide selection of stakeholders. There was a detailed consideration of issues arising from the oral and written submissions received as well as the research work undertaken by the Oireachtas Library and Research Service. All of this contributed significantly to the development and finalisation of the 29 recommendations in the report, but the report has been sitting there since and my two colleagues, Deputies Pearse Doherty and Martin Kenny, have decided that this cannot be allowed to continue.

A significant amount of collective work went into this report and there was all-party agreement on it but report is just sitting there. We, therefore, took it upon ourselves and sought support from other parties and individuals in the Oireachtas to support the Bill. We have received an overwhelming response but, unfortunately, the Government has not committed as of yet. I hope that the Minister of State will give his support to the Bill. He will be living up to the work he did as Chairman of the committee, which was the genesis of the Bill, and to what he said during the debate at the time.

The motivation behind the Bill is that there is a forgotten community on our islands and in coastal areas. This community has been consistently neglected by various political parties down through the years and the reason it has been neglected is that it does not have the numbers to make a difference in an election. That is the reason this community have been neglected and abandoned by the political establishment of the State, and it continues to be the case. If one looks at how the Common Fisheries Policy works and the distribution of quota and so forth, it is designed and continues to be implemented to facilitate the big beneficiaries at the large end of the scale. That is wrong. Our natural resources do not belong to individuals and there is an obligation on all of us, as legislators, to ensure that we treat everyone fairly. This includes the people who live on our islands.

A huge indictment of the political system is the decline, as Deputy Martin Kenny outlined, in the population on our islands and along the coast since 1986. There is an obligation on each of us to ensure that we give them fair play and part of giving them fair play is to give them a sustainable income so that they can live where they and their parents and grandparents were born - they have a traditional link to those islands - rather than forcing them to emigrate to America, Australia, England or elsewhere to try to seek out a livelihood and an income. There is an income off their shore. A part of a lot of allocations of quota has been a historical track record. If people are prepared to look, there is a historical track record from our island communities that is going back generations. It dates back hundreds of years. They lived and worked and reared their families on the islands.

Recommendation 10 of the report, which is central to the Bill, states:

The sub-Committee recommends that the Government examines the feasibility of the issuance of 'heritage licences' to rural coastal and island communities. Such licences would optimally facilitate traditional fishing practices.

That is the purpose of the Bill, namely, to facilitate this traditional practice. It is to facilitate an economy on the islands where people can survive and live there.

Dangers have been pointed out. I spoke to a Minister already and he obviously had not read the Bill. He told me that our Bill means someone can stand at the end of a pier, wave his licence and give it to someone else to go back out fishing. This senior Minister had not even read the Bill. That shows the kind of bull that goes on in here. People make judgments without even knowing the facts about what they are doing or saying.

There are dangers which have been pointed out, including, for example, granting special terms and conditions for any sector that cause migration of vehicles into the area. We have dealt with that in the Bill, however. We made it quite clear that a person has to live on the island, has to be fishing for a living on the island and has to be onboard the fishing vessel. That is copperfastened. If people want to look at it, there is also a fallback position. A prime example is how Tralee Bay Oyster Society works. Both a licence and a permit are required to fish it. That is a fallback position. If the Government has a difficulty, it can insert that into the Bill on Committee Stage.

There is no reason the Government cannot support the Bill. If the Government has difficulties with the legislation, it can be tweaked. The Minister of State, when he was Chairman of the committee, stood over the concept. I am very proud to have played a part in producing the report and I am quite sure the Minister of State is too. It did an awful lot of good and gave a voice to the voiceless. These are the forgotten communities. It gave a voice to them and today we must support the Bill. Let it go to committee Stage and finally implement a report that has been agreed by all parties in the House.

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