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

My colleague, Deputy Ó Broin, has substantively responded to the Bill on behalf of our party. My responsibility, as our fisheries spokesperson, is to speak for the fishermen I am engaging with up and down the coast. The Minister will know from the protest held outside the convention centre in recent times that there is real anger across our coastal communities that they have not historically received their fair share of the fish in our waters. Of course, the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement made that situation worse with another 15% of our quota lost, resulting in tens of millions lost every year. To put that into context, we have at least 12% of the entirety of the waters within the European Union but get 4% of the fish. What does that mean? It means we lose thousands and thousands of jobs in coastal communities every year and hundreds of millions of euros. That is the context in which the Minister is presenting this proposition to fishermen. There is a distrust of those in positions of political leadership because of historical failures.

I have spoken to fishermen up and down the coast about this issue. Of course, they are not opposed to offshore energy generation. They are intelligent people. They understand we need to meet the State's responsibilities. They merely ask to be genuinely consulted and that their traditional fishing grounds be respected. I understand the industry states this is also its desire. The task facing the Minister in this legislation is to ensure there are robust measures in place regarding consultation, especially with coastal and fishing communities, so that they will genuinely be partners in this process. They are not there to prevent the establishment of offshore energy projects in this State. They just want to make sure they can fish.

A comment has struck me again and again. I put to some fishermen the idea of increased financial supports when they are tied up. They are increasingly forced to fish for lobster and crab. Access to mackerel, herring and other fish such as spurdog has been denied to them, so they are squeezed more and more. I talked about financial supports and subsidies and it struck me that people on a number of piers said they just want to fish like those who came before them. Of course, they want to do so sustainably. They asked for officials of the Marine Institute to go out with them and officials of the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority to come out to the pier to examine what they are landing. They said they just want to fish sustainably. That is all our coastal communities want to do. I believe we can do both. These ideas are not in conflict with one another.

The marine resource is immense. The protection of marine biodiversity is the responsibility of all. I appeal to the Minister, as did my colleague, Deputy Ó Broin, to get this legislation right. There have obviously been substantive submissions from inshore fishermen's organisations and others into this process. I ask that, at the various stages, these groups are heard and engaged with. If we do this right, we might get legislation which strikes the right balance and does justice to all stakeholders.

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