Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Mick Wallace.

I thank Deputy Pat The Cope Gallagher for bringing forward this motion, which is vitally important. The motion calls for the rescinding of Sl 89 of 2018, which sets up a penalty points system within the fishing Industry. The previous scheme had been challenged through the courts and found to be wanting and this is the replacement. I wonder why we cannot get this right, and it points to very serious problems within the Minister's Department.

One of the things I find very disingenuous about the Government's reaction to this motion is the pretence that things are urgent and time is of the essence in setting up the penalty points system. The Government has had years to do this properly. In fact, the Minister, in his response to a question from me about this last November, stated that it has been going on since 2009. We are eight years down the road now and we are being told that this is a matter of urgency. A couple of hundred million is dependant on it being done now and we cannot rescind the statutory instrument. As I said, it has been around since 2009 and this has been going on since then. I think Fianna Fáil was in Government in 2009 and failed to deal with this also.

Granted it was cancelled by the courts and perhaps that could not have been foreseen, although I have my doubts about that. The original scheme was struck down by the courts because it did not contain fair procedures capable of being written into the system from the very start.

This always seems to happen with fishing, which is interesting. I might be wrong, but it seems to me that there is no other aspect of the Government work that relies on the courts to sort it out. Indeed, the parent Department that fisheries is under can now work without the courts at all and I wonder when that will permeate through to that Department. The Minister will say that that is because all fishermen are confrontational but I do not believe they are any more confrontational than farmers. When this issue is sorted out, perhaps there is work for the Minister to do in terms of figuring out why the courts are such an integral part of our fishing industry.

This is the third attempt we have made to deal with the penalty point system. One wonders why it takes three attempts to deal with a system that is largely laid out in European legislation. There are many things wrong with this system. How is it that an application for an appeal is allowed up to 20 working days but an application for an oral hearing of an appeal has to be made within ten working days of that date? Surely 20 working days would not be too long or cumbersome for the State but it would make a huge difference for a skipper or boat owner. Different dates will lead to difficulties; there are five, ten and 20-day limits within the statutory obligations.

In cases of the transfer of the entitlements to fish, the points will be assigned on each part of the transfer, which is crazy. For example, if four points have been assigned to a vessel and it is then sold and the tonnage is split between a number of vessels the four points will apply to each part of the transfer. It is simply amazing, really, that the Department would allow this to happen. Surely the Department knows how vessels are sold and tonnage is split up, or indeed the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, SFPA. Yesterday the Department said that it had nothing to do with enforcement or criminal applications within the procedure. The SFPA obviously has sole responsibility, so it should know all about it. In the case of criminal proceedings, it is possible for it to be found a couple of years later that nothing happened but yet a boat would still have penalty points for it. It does not make any sense. The Minister has pushed this through without consulting with Members of this House or the Dáil committee. I have been raising this issue for a number of years at the Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, and the first I heard of it was when it was put on the agenda. The Minister has not consulted with anyone about this.

I really wonder whether the Department actually wants to make a system that works and is acceptable to everyone or whether it wants to have everything its own way. I believe that is at the root of the problem. Time is running out. That is not the problem of fishermen or the owners of vessels; it is clear that it is the responsibility of the Department. There is a matter of justice involved in this process, which is not at dispute. All anyone wants is a system that allows for a fair hearing and I do not see any proposals from the Minister that includes that.

The Minister should take the points system back to the drawing board and design a system that will work for fishing communities to ensure that we have a system that is fair to everyone. If he cannot do that without losing out on funding from the EU, the only person to blame is himself, as well as his Department.

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