Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Sinn Féin and the Minister's party, including its Government partners, have different views on the type of country we want and this is okay. It is, in fact, healthy for a democracy that voters have a clear choice when they go to the polls. Sinn Féin will always prioritise State investment in public services and providing income supports, housing, education and jobs where needed. We promote a bottom-up and public collective approach. The approach of the Minister and Fine Gael is different. They support a top-down wealth creation model. That is okay too in a democracy. Of course, we know this model excludes people. It does not afford equal opportunity. We in Sinn Féin will never support or promote such an approach.

I will not stand here this evening and criticise the measures the Minister is proposing to legislate for in the Bill. In fact, we welcome them. They represent social progress as they provide more means to those who have least. I welcome the measures and so does my party. I particularly support the pension measure. The increase in the pension age to 67 became a huge issue in the 2020 general election and rightly so. We in Sinn Féin advocated and supported a return to the State retirement age, with the choice of individuals, to the age of 65. We welcome the move to 66, albeit that it was done kicking and screaming, but we hope the Minister will go further with further public pressure and bring it back to 65.

I wish to speak specifically on the social protection measures available to the Irish fishing community.

I believe we need to do something radically different when it comes to social protection and fishers. I encourage the Minister to commission a piece of work on how we treat fishers with regard to income supports. While the Department administers payments universally, and this is generally the right approach, we have to recognise the uniqueness of the work of Irish fishers and their vital importance to the Irish economy and food chain.

Covid has exposed the deficiencies. Overnight, the Irish fishing industry was turned upside down. The export market was wiped out, there was no domestic market to replace it and fishers were left scrambling to find income. While the PUP was eventually opened up to the fishing community, and this was welcomed, it did not recognise the uniqueness of the nature of fishing, which is dependent on weather conditions and the time of year in regard to fish stocks. The lifting of restrictions is a matter for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment but it is also relevant in this regard. Fishers could not access temporary wage subsidy supports because most are on self-employed contracts, they could not access working capital loans as there was existing debt with financial institutions and they were locked out of restart grants from local authorities because they do not pay rates. The tie-up scheme from Europe to cover weather events was totally inadequate, too late and ill-thought-out.

With Brexit, and the ever-increasing threat of a no-deal Brexit, I am appealing to the Minister to do something different. The Irish fishing community is on its knees and needs support. We need new thinking. I appeal to the Minister to engage with the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to put together a task force involving fishing representatives, and to look at introducing targeted, specific measures that the fishing community can access when crisis hits. As I said at the outset, the fishing community needs support. If it is going to survive into the future, and as a people we need it to do so, then radical action must be taken. I implore the Minister to do so and I am happy to work with her to develop supporting measures. In particular, I am thinking of the inshore fleet, which is reliant on lobster and crab fishing and the like and is very limited in its access to traditional fisheries like herring. It is very important that the Minister engages with the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, to look at some novel approach, working with the fishing representative organisations, to give supports to keep our fishermen delivering this resource to coastal communities and, of course, this food resource to the Irish people.

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