Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Gallagher and all of my colleagues. With few exceptions, the overall direction of travel is one we are in agreement on. I appreciate the concerns that have been raised and I will try to deal with them as comprehensively as possible now and in the further debate on the amendments.

The beauty of this legislation is that it is short and succinct. It seeks only to put back in place that which existed up to the October 2016 Supreme Court ruling. As it goes to the heart of some of the concerns that have been raised, I will read into the record exactly what we are talking about. In its essence, the Bill is about keeping people out of our waters. Deputy Kenny alluded to this fear of the armada from the United Nations arriving into our inshore sector. In fact, the Bill specifically talks about keeping people out and it being illegal to come in other than by the provisions of the legislation, which is about allowing boats from Northern Ireland. The Bill states:

(1) ...a person on board a foreign sea-fishing boat shall not fish or attempt to fish while the boat is within the exclusive fishery limits unless he or she is authorised by law to do so.

(2) A person who is on board a sea-fishing boat owned and operated in Northern Ireland may fish or attempt to fish while the boat is within the area between 0 and 6 nautical miles as measured from the baseline...

In layman's language, my clear understanding of that, and the advice available to me legally and otherwise, is that anybody else, other than from Northern Ireland, in our zero to six nautical miles zone would face the full rigours of the law.

I appreciate the point has been made by other speakers in the context of the London Fisheries Convention and the voisinagearrangements. Thevoisinage arrangements long predate the London Fisheries Convention. What the London Fisheries Convention did is acknowledge their existence and facilitated recognition of history and custom up to that point and their continued operation in this State up to October 2016, when the Supreme Court ruled. In essence, all we are doing is restoring the status quo ante, which I think is the term used by the Taoiseach in the debate. It is as simple as that. The legislation in all other respects is about locking people out of our zero to six nautical miles zone.

There are many nations that are participants or are involved in the London Fisheries Convention but this legislation is specifically about restoring what was the custom and practice up to the Supreme Court ruling. At that stage, if the London Fisheries Convention had enabled all of that to happen anyway, it did not happen. The custom and practice was that it was a North-South relationship. I think this is the right thing to do. We can get into all the complicated reasons of why it is the right thing to do but I think that, as citizens of the island, it is the right thing to do. We share this space together historically. It is a complicated relationship, North-South, and I know those who are closer to the Border are more in tune with the complexity of that.

I want to come to Deputy Breathnach's point. I take exception to being accused of being more interested in protecting the rights of UK citizens than of Irish citizens. My only imperative in this legislation is to do the right thing. There are many measurements of what that is, whether it is Brexit, the Good Friday Agreement, the troubled history we have had prior to that or the identity politics whereby some people in Northern Ireland look to London and some look to Dublin. This is a complicated area. However, I and the Government, and I think most of Deputies who spoke, acknowledge this is about reinstating something that existed. It is not about prioritising one political tradition or identity over the other. It is important in the context of that comment to say, in the context of people in Northern Ireland, that there are people-----

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