Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will take the opportunity at this critical time to say that when we are talking about the protection and the future roadmap that we are trying to make, our job really is that we are charged with ensuring that people will be able to make a livelihood or a part-time livelihood in the future. That is the basic thrust of what we are trying to do. In doing that the Members are making very sound points and sincere arguments. I wish to make one point and a heartfelt plea with regard to smaller fishermen and inshore fishermen. They are the people along both sides of what I call the Kenmare river and what some people call Kenmare Bay.

All around our coast, we have small people who traditionally back over the years, like their fathers and grandfathers before them, had a boat. Over the years it has evolved and they might have got smaller. For some of them their enterprise might have got bigger and they adjusted it to suit their household. However, they are under severe threat from pair trawling, something the Minister of State knows about. It devastates a fishing habitat area. It is a practice that must be questioned. I can see the point of view of the people who own the boats and carry out pair trawling. I know some of them and have debated the matter with them. While I appreciate it is their livelihood, for all intents and purposes they are vacuuming up everything that is in the water, mixing it and making pulp out of it. Expensive valuable fish get mixed up with mackerel and it is mushed up into pulp. There is no individualisation or grading of the fish or anything like that.

The traditional fishermen who might have gone out and fished for salmon or other fish are finding that all of a sudden the whole place has been vacuumed up, sucked up and mushed up, and they are left with nothing. The Ceann Comhairle would pull me up if I were not talking to the subject at hand. We are talking about the protection of a habitat and making sure it is there for the future. If the breeding fish and everything else are taken out of the water, the place is left devoid of any life. If someone comes along and sucks everything out, it is a very slow process for it to come back in again. It goes against the grain of everything. It is like going into a farmer's yard and taking the bull out of the herd. If the bull is gone, there will be nothing after a certain length of time. It is the same thing with breeding areas for fish and our habitats as we call them. I just want to make that point.

I do not want to take up too much time and interfere with other people. I want to put that point on the record. We need to look at that practice. I am talking about a specific area. I could talk about other parts of the coastline in County Kerry that I know most about. I am giving the example of the Kenmare river. How does it make sense when a big trawler pair trawls, hoovers up everything from one side to the other and takes everything out of the middle? Absolutely nothing is left for the small traditional fisherman and his or her part-time living is gone. We cannot stand over that.

I very much respect that if I met one of the people who owns those trawlers, they would say, "What about me?" I can see where they are coming from, but the practice of pair trawling is fundamentally questionable.

See this speech in context