Michael Finucane (Fine Gael)

I welcome this Bill which has had a long gestation. Some years ago I asked the Minister in the Dáil to introduce a system of this nature in the interests of openness and transparency. For many years there have been question marks with regard to the dispensing of licences. We remember from the past a situation where some were classified as "Dingle licences" as a result of a previous Taoiseach, Mr. C.J. Haughey, dispensing licences to people around Dingle. It took a few years for that situation to be resolved and for further areas where these people could fish to be opened up. I welcome this being taken from the hands of the Department and politicians and the setting up of this independent appeals type system.

The Minister's visit to the House is timely. Yesterday many of us participated in an interesting discussion with the various fishing organisations and Bord Iascaigh Mhara. We discussed in particular the implications of the forthcoming review of the Common Fisheries Policy and the December discussions. December is the traditional time of the year for our almost ritual annual review. Ministers go to Brussels, declining fish stocks are flagged in advance, cuts in projected allowances are magnified and then the Ministers return and claim a victory because things are not as bad as anticipated. This happens every year.

There has been no coherent strategy with regard to long-term use of this resource. An example I gave yesterday illustrates this. In the previous medium term and common fisheries review, under the able stewardship of Dr. Whitaker, he maintained that the greatest problem for the fishing industry was the high level of discards or juvenile fish caught. He made that statement in 1991, yet ten years later we heard at the discussion yesterday that the level of discards is as high as 70%. On the other hand we have all the leading scientific experts say that fish stocks are declining on an ongoing basis and that there is a lack of conservation.

I applaud Ireland's limited attempts at conservation to preserve our fishing stocks. Our greatest difficulty is that there is a lack of uniformity in conservation at EU level. Although we have 18% of the territorial waters we have only a small percentage of the overall fish catch in contrast to some of our European neighbours, Spain in particular. In the context of the forthcoming talks I am concerned that pressure will be exerted, particularly by other countries, to retain quotas despite declining stocks.