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

The Taoiseach basically said in his reply that there is no specific committee meeting on marine and fishing. We are the only island state, which will hopefully be a nation in the near future, in Europe. There are two junior Ministers in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, neither of whom deals specifically with fisheries and the marine. That indicates the level of commitment the Government has towards fishing communities.

Deputy O'Sullivan represents a fishing community and he should know that the view of fishermen up and down the coast is that the task force report was a fait accomplibecause under the Common Fisheries Policy, CFP, our fishing fleet is allocated 15% of the fish in our own waters under this policy. The fishing fleets of other EU member states get 85% of the fish in our waters. Let us analysis this further, in case there is any doubt about these figures. Some 29% of the north-east Atlantic waters are under the Irish exclusive economic zone. We receive 7.6% of the monkfish allocation, 5.3% of hake and 5.3% of haddock. Let us consider France, which has 23% of the north-east Atlantic waters. It gets 59% of monkfish, 45% of hake and 67% of haddock. This is utterly shameful. How can anyone representing the fishing community not come in here full of anger at what is happening in our coastal waters?

The Taoiseach can frown all he likes. He should have a plan for the upcoming CFP negotiations. He should stand outside the Berlaymont and say that we no longer accept what is happening to our fishing communities. He is now asking communities to decommission a further 60 vessels. Based on 2006 figures, of the vessels longer than 12 m, we will be down to one third of our fleet. This means thousands of livelihoods will be gone in addition to hundreds of millions of euro each year.

I will reiterate my comments during the pre-European Council statements last week because the Taoiseach missed them. We are the laughing stock of Europe; we have the richest fishing grounds in Europe and we are handing fishing rights away without a fight or even trying. The Taoiseach should get some fire in his belly and focus on fisheries and the immense natural resource surrounding this country. Will he set up a dedicated committee for fisheries? Will he create a plan for the upcoming negotiations on the CFP to secure our fair share of fishing quotas in our waters?

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