John Dardis (Progressive Democrats)

I commend the Minister of State on the work he is doing in fisheries, both in this area and in respect of game fisheries. At the outset I must declare a vested interest because I am unashamedly an angler and have been for nearly 50 years since I started to fish on the banks of the Liffey. In the past I have bored previous Ministers, and probably the House, by going on an angling odyssey around Ireland from the time I started to fish on Lough Sheelin, which I had to leave because of pig pollution. I then went to Lough Ennell but had to leave it because there was no tertiary treatment in Mullingar. I then went to Lough Conn but had to leave it because of the phosphates going into it. The perspective I bring to this debate is an environmental one and the damage done to the environment by greedy people.

All this hogwash about maintaining rural communities, people living in depressed areas and the need for jobs and so on does not add up when one considers the jobs lost in the same communities and areas by virtue of the devastation to the environment and the millions of pounds lost to the economy from the loss of the anglers who came to Ireland. When I started to fish on Lough Corrib nearly 40 years ago, the people who came from abroad flew to Shannon, hired a car, stayed a month, hired a gilly every day and had serious money when there was no money in this country. They are now going to Russia and the Falkland Islands, with some going to New Zealand and Alaska. They have left Ireland because the sport is not here. If the sport was here, they would come here because they have the money. My sympathies are with people like Kieran Thompson running Newport House in County Mayo, Peter Mantle running Delphi Lodge – who bought a place and tried to make a go of it – and Máire O'Connor running Lough Inagh Lodge. The Zetland Country House Hotel is being sold and is on the market.