Seanad debates

Thursday, 21 November 2002

Fisheries (Amendment) Bill, 2002: Second Stage.

 

What are we doing about these leaky old tubs which are floating around the place with 70,000 tonnes or 200 million gallons of heavy crude oil in single hull vessels, travelling through some of the most storm tossed waters in this part of the world and registered in some banana republic? We should require vessels travelling through our waters to be properly registered and properly insured. I understand insurance cover in this instance might be in the region of €1 million. That will do a lot of good. There is an international insurance fund amounting to approximately €1 billion. When that is cleaned out there will be no more money left when the next incident occurs. No doubt there will be another incident because of the blatant idiocy and blindness of saying we will not rule out these tankers until 2017. That means another 13 years for these types of accidents to occur. Thirteen is an unlucky number for some and it is likely to be unlucky for us.

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