Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this excellent motion. There is a centuries-old legal dictum applying in our Irish common law system, overlaid by the requirements for the administration of justice under Bunreacht na hÉireann 1937, that no person can be a judge in his or her own case.

Accordingly, it is not the duly appointed judges of Ireland who prosecute people for alleged infringements of the law but the statutory, separate and independent Director of Public Prosecutions, who presents all relevant and admissible evidence before our courts. Our judges, sometimes sitting with juries, listen to the admissible evidence and then decide whether an accused person committed the alleged offence. The test governing the guilt or innocence of an accused person is that the prosecutor must prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, following which, in the event of a conviction, the accused person is sentenced in accordance with the law, generally by way of a fine or the imposition of a prison sentence.

The EU penalty points legislation dating from 2008 was introduced into Irish law by means of a statutory instrument by the Fianna Fáil leader, an Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, supported by Fine Gael on 26 August 2020. This instrument seeks to implement in Irish law the provisions of the 2008 EU Council regulation, which is legislation that was initially put forward and designed to deal with the problems of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Once the competent authority has decided an infringement is serious, the SFPA must proceed to impose a penalty on the unfortunate owner of the offending fishing boat. In Ireland, the possible penalties to be imposed by the SFPA in the event of repeat offences being committed include the confiscation of a sea fishing boat licence.

Although we in Ireland might think that imposing a penalty as enormously damaging and punishing as the confiscation of a sea fishing boat licence should only be considered on the basis of proof and when a case is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, our Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Government has sadly chosen to grant the power to destroy a fishing boat owner's livelihood and the livelihoods of crew and support staff through the confiscation of the fishing licence on the basis of an offence having been proved to have been committed on the balance of probability. I can think of no other area of our lives in which such an extraordinarily severe penalty can be imposed on the basis of a probability and in circumstances in which the detective, the prosecution barrister, the expert witness, the judge and jury, and the person imposing the sentence are one and the same. This is shocking beyond belief in our democracy.

In May 2018, the Dáil voted down a Fianna Fáil motion to have the statutory instrument annulled. This motion was tabled by the then Fianna Fáil Deputy, Pat the Cope Gallagher. I therefore ask every Fianna Fáil Deputy why, within two months of entering government, the Fianna Fáil Taoiseach, who had been acting as Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine for only seven days, did a dramatic U-turn and signed a statutory instrument which the party voted against entering law when in opposition? The chief executive of the Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation, Seán O’Donoghue, criticised the move the Taoiseach made during his short term as acting Minister holding the agriculture, food and the marine brief. The system signed into law by the Taoiseach on 28 August by statutory instrument does not allow for the right of appeal except through a court of law and penalties can remain on a licence should a case be thrown out.

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