Brendan Daly (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Bill and the Minister of State. The Bill, which is very important for the industry, will afford us an opportunity to comment on the current issues which are of concern to the fishing industry. There is one aspect of the Bill which needs to be dealt with but we might have more time to deal with it on Committee Stage. A matter of concern to many fishermen, in particular young fisherman, who want to get into the business is that of tonnage, including the availability and cost. I am not certain that this is dealt with in the Bill. The licensing appeals system is welcome, although it is long overdue.

There is widespread concern within the industry about the availability of fish. The previous speaker mentioned stock pressures, especially on the whitefish species that have traditionally been commercially fished – cod, haddock, plaice, whiting, mackerel and so on. Contrary to what Senator Norris – who admitted he was not familiar with the industry – may feel, the reality is that unless serious measures are taken to conserve stocks, there will be no stocks for anybody.

Our involvement in the EEC has been strongly criticised, but when we joined in 1973 we had no fishing industry. We had a very small inshore fleet with bad boats and no management of fisheries. The value of seafish landings when we joined the Community was about £5 million. The mackerel fishery had almost collapsed and we were depending on sales to Africa, where the people could not pay. The herring fishery in the Celtic Sea had collapsed totally and had been closed for a number of years before we joined because the stocks had been fished out of existence, not by Spanish or Danish boats but by Irish boats. In 1973 we had no real, historic fishing industry. We had small, inshore boats fishing mostly for mackerel and herring, which constituted 80% of the total catch at that time. We had no mackerel market and the herring fishery was in a state of collapse.