Dáil debates

Thursday, 28 March 2019

Sea-Fisheries (Amendment) Bill 2017 [Seanad]: Committee and Remaining Stages

 

4:25 pm

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

I am surprised that Deputy Fitzpatrick accuses me of not engaging or consulting. I have met more delegations of fishermen for the Deputy than for most others during my three years in office. I should also point out that it is more difficult to have engagement when a group of fishermen puts a solicitor on notice when we are trying to engage with the Regional Inshore Fisheries Forum, RIFF, in that region. This Bill is about access, not management. We made efforts to manage and to engage, but it is not made easier when those who wish to conserve do not engage and appoint a solicitor to do so on their behalf. Engagement is a complex arrangement that takes multiple factors into account and it is not made easier by having solicitors on notice and seeking to have what we have always considered in this State to be a public asset made private.

Deputy Clare Daly stated that we do not know what reciprocal arrangement we will have with the UK. If I am not mistaken, the Deputy is conflating two issues. We have reciprocal access to the UK's zero to six-mile zone at present. I believe she is referring to Brexit and what access we will have outside the inshore sector. When we are seeking to get continued access in the Brexit negotiations, it does not help our case if we put up barriers to our inshore sector and state that there can be no boats from Northern Ireland. We have reciprocal access at present in the context of voisinage, which only deals with the zero to six mile zone. The broader and bigger picture for the fishing industry is undoubtedly the economic impact of future access in the context of Brexit - what access we may have to those waters in the future and what will be the consequences of that. Certainly, there is a Brexit context to this debate and we should not put up barriers to the inshore when we are seeking to ensure our continued access to the UK's 200-mile zone.

Deputy Clare Daly and Deputy McConalogue referred to the Northern Ireland register. We must look at what the custom and practice have been for more than the last 60 years. Has there been a headlong rush of boats from Wales, England and Scotland to the Northern Ireland register? There has not, and there is nothing to suggest that it would happen. To do so the boats would have to forgo the investment they have made in the regions and industry where they are currently and the species they catch. What would be the purpose? There is nothing in the custom and practice of this operation for as long as it has existed, and that is since long before the London Fisheries Convention in the 1960s, to suggest that these people will suddenly drop tools in Grimsby, Yarmouth or the fishing ports of Scotland and head like an armada to our zero to six mile zone. They did not do it previously and they have not sought to register in great numbers on the Northern Ireland register.

Regarding who can be on the Northern Ireland register, Deputy McConalogue can look at the profile of the two people who were arrested and tried. That is what we are talking about, by and large. It would be the overwhelming majority. As I said earlier, let us not get bogged down in a species-specific argument. This is about the inshore sector in all its manifestations. The register is just a Northern Ireland register that is part of an overall UK register. One registers one's boat where one operates it, and it is as simple as that. It is a specific Northern Ireland register. There is nothing to suggest that there was an influx of people onto that register over the last 60 or 70 years, and there is nothing to suggest that it will happen in the future either.

Deputy Martin Kenny is asking me to comment on areas of company law. Obviously, companies register in a location and pay their taxes there. The Deputy is making a species-specific inquiry. No company can take mussel seed outside of this jurisdiction or Northern Ireland. Regardless of what companies are involved in that industry, they must use the seed in mussel farms either in the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland.

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