Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

That was July. We are now in November. Nothing has happened. The Taoiseach is not even clear whether an appeal has been taken. I do not wish to put the Taoiseach on the spot but we know that from July the substantive judgment was given. The order might not have been perfected. Is an appeal under way? If there is an appeal it would not seem to be a very good way to proceed because there will be a further delay.

The court did not take issue with the Government's policy and what was behind it, but it did take issue with the consultation process. This is a golden opportunity to do it right because when the Government brought in that policy it was a blunt instrument that affected a certain number of trawlers over 80 m which fish sustainably. Those fishermen were caught in that overall ban, including one earning a livelihood on the Aran Islands and others in the south west and so on. Unfortunately, those trawlers were caught. The real issue was the non-sustainable fishing of sprat, on which the ecosystem is dependent. The bigger boats, by and large, take in the sprat in an unsustainable way for fish meal, while it is caught for human consumption by the smaller fishermen. The consultation process was faulty. There were 900 submissions, the vast majority of them begging the Government to bring in a sustainable policy. This is a chance to go back and look at the small number of trawlers that were unfortunately caught by the blunt instrument, separate from the industrial trawlers or those carrying out fishing on an industrial basis.

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