Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I congratulate the Minister of State and the Department on introducing this Bill. It is appropriate in this debate to look back at the history of the fishing industry. The whole community, including the trade union movement and the political parties, should take responsibility for ignoring the industry and treating it as a low level employer. It is the only area of Irish industry which was not dealt with in any of the economic plans put together by Whitaker and Lemass in the 1950s and 1960s. That is where the mistake was originally made. When I discussed this with Dr. Whitaker many years later, he immediately conceded that this was a mistake. He said that while considering development at the time, it was disregarded.