Noel Grealish (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This penalty points issue is appearing before us at regular intervals and it fails to be fit for purpose each time when challenged. It is high time the Minister and his Department came up with a proper plan to deal with this. Council Regulation (EC) No. 1224/2009 of 20 November 2009 has been in place for more than ten years and the Department should have dealt with it properly a long time ago. None of the fishing organisations, big or small, is happy with the way this is written, so it looks like it will be challenged and will most likely fail again. It is a waste of everybody's time.

In my own constituency, there is a fisheries harbour and four offshore islands which are involved in fishing. When the joint Oireachtas committee published its report on sustainable, rural, coastal and island communities, which was launched on Inis Oírr in January 2014, the islanders were at first encouraged by the recommendations about fishing on the islands. They set up a representative group of island fishermen from Donegal, Mayo, Galway and Cork, the Irish Islands Marine Resource Organisation, IIMRO.

I am sorry. I will have to finish. I am out of breath, having run to the Chamber. I will hand over to the next speaker.

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