Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

The Minister of State and I have had a number of engagements now in the Dáil and at the committee. I wish him well. That is a big understatement, actually. We have waited a long time for a dedicated Minister of State with responsibility for fisheries. It is vital that he does well for all of our fisheries and coastal communities. I am going to refer to a matter on the Dáil record. We had an exchange on it earlier at the committee. My colleague, Deputy Conor McGuinness, is Chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Fisheries and Maritime Affairs. We jointly launched our report into the survey which was carried out late last year. Hundreds of fishermen, workers and businesses in the seafood sector took part. It was a very representative survey around the coast. I am not shocked by the result, if I am being honest. For the Minister of State starting off with a good heart, as he is doing, it is important to be honest about the problems we have and to acknowledge that we have a profound crisis. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, some of which were touched on by the Minister of State, we have not been able to avail of the immense resource.

In recent days the Minister of State will have been with the Taoiseach at the UN conference on oceans. The Taoiseach talked about one of the greatest marine resources in the world and what it brings but we are not getting anywhere near the full value of it in so many ways. I want to focus particularly on fisheries today. We have some of the richest fishing waters in Europe, if not the world, surrounding us. We have territorial waters that are seven times our land mass. It was pointed out to me in recent days that if all that was put together, we would be one of the biggest countries in the European Union. This is a huge resource that we have. Some 90% of the people in that survey said they feel that the industry has declined over the last ten years. Although they had the option, not one respondent said the industry had significantly improved over ten years. That is damning. Some 90% said they would not encourage their children to continue. This is intergenerational work, handed down. There was a documentary on RTÉ recently, "Tarrac na Farraige", which was beautiful but also tragic. We see this noble tradition at the heart of Irish culture that is just being allowed to wither. We have collectively failed as a country to get the full resource. We have to do so much better.

The Minister of State spoke about going to Europe and said that if we ask for bluefin tuna, somebody else has to give it up. Somebody else should not have got it in the first place. We have to have those honest conversations. These are our territorial waters. We have one of the most lucrative fish species in the world that gets fattened in our waters and is a predator fish. There is an armada of Japanese vessels catching them outside the 200 mile limit. Our guys can only catch and release; they can lift it and look at it but it has to be put back. It is derisory stuff. These are the conversations we need to have.

European people, no matter what country they are from, are decent just like us. They have a sense of fairness just like us and know what is fair and unfair. We have 12% of European waters and get less than 6% of the fish. We have to have a conversation about it. We have had to decommission our fleet while other countries are investing in their fleet right now. We touched on this earlier today in the committee. We have countries like Iceland, Norway and the Faroe Islands. I have great admiration for the people of those countries in many ways, and the seafood industry that has been built in Norway. I am an admirer of the Norwegian people. However, this is wrong. They have not followed the science. They have overfished mackerel. Mackerel is a migratory species which spawns off the west coast of Ireland and works its way up the Atlantic. It is a shared, precious resource which does not belong to any one country. One set of people whose country and territory is part of that collective space, collective waters, overfished and ignored the science. Laws do not work unless everybody follows them equally. Here, the law-breakers were rewarded with trade deals with the European Union. The Union was telling one thing to our Irish communities. For God's sake, we have a young girl here in Ireland who had to go to Europe about the fact that she could not fish pollock any more. That is really contested. Our inshore and islands people were forced and told it is zero catch for pollock. They have to fish for crab and lobster. Pollock was a vital part of that system of fish they catch throughout the year. They are having to abide by the rules and suffer the setback, but when it comes to Norway, Iceland and the Faroes there is huge investment from European member states like Holland. Dutch multinationals have put massive money into those states to recklessly overfish and there is no price to pay. This is an injustice. These are the conversations we need to have a European level.

The word "patriotism" is bandied around these days and it is abused. To me it is about looking at every other country. Nobody is better than us and nobody is worse than us. We are all equal here. We are asking for a fair share of the fish in our waters and a Government that stands by our people. I wish the Minister of State well. If he takes that path he will have no criticism from me.

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