Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is happening in the jaws of Brexit but it has been hanging around for a long time. It could have been dealt with in the past couple of years rather than waiting till the last minute to push it through. That has made a difference in how we would consider this legislation. We were prepared to speak on it before but the Government let it sit until we came to so-called Brexit or whatever is going to happen, and all of a sudden there is a mad panic to get it passed. That is a very retrograde step but it is not all that surprising when we think that the voisinage agreement has been around since the 1960s and has never been put on a legislative footing. This is not a reflection on the present Minister but on Irish Governments all along, for example, the common travel area has been around since 1922, 1923 or 1924 and was never put on a legislative footing. One would wonder what Government actually does in this State when it does nothing that will have an impact. Then it becomes a major crisis when we suddenly realise this is going to happen and we have done nothing about it, and legislation is rushed to deal with these issues. It is appalling and is a sad reflection on this Dáil that these issues have never been dealt with in a timely fashion. If this had been dealt with in the 1960s and put on a legislative footing, this case would never have come up but that is a different matter. This shows the way Government has operated in this country. How many other things are left that we do not know about and that we will discover have not been put on a legislative footing and the Dáil has to rush to legislate for only when the proverbial hits the fan?

We do not know how much fish Northern vessels catch in Irish waters or how much fish Irish vessels catch in Northern waters yet we have a Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, SFPA, and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The SFPA is unable to answer queries about how much fish is affected by this. That is the nature of this Government and Department.

We are actually talking about making sure that access is guaranteed for Dutch vessels to take mussel seed from around the State. This legislation should deal with mussel dredging and mussels, which were the subject of a Supreme Court case. We should be able to protect that industry.

This Department allowed Irish-based fishermen around our coast to buy Northern-registered vessels in order that they could get into the business because it is so expensive here. Fishermen who grow up in the communities and want to pursue that livelihood cannot afford to get into it because of the nonsensical system whereby previous Governments have allowed the tonnage system to become a private market and fishermen and people are excluded from it. The Department has turned a blind eye to people buying licensed boats in the North and fishing them in the South. It is appalling.

See this speech in context