Paul Coghlan (Fine Gael)

I am glad to have an opportunity to say a few words on the motion. I welcome the Minister of State to the House. He is a man of great experience who has extensive knowledge of his brief. The question, however, is what level of Government support does he have? The Fine Gael Party suspects that, unfortunately, he enjoys little support and we sympathise with him.

The Government has allowed the introduction of days at sea limits for fishing vessels in the Irish Sea and off the north-west coast. These are useless in stock conservation terms and penalise all fishermen operating in the areas in question, regardless of whether they target or catch the stocks, particularly cod, which are supposed to be the beneficiaries of these measures.

The Government has presided over encouraging whitefish vessel owners to purchase new boats with grant aid. This leaves them up to their eyes in debt, while the fishing opportunities open to them are allowed to disappear before their eyes. It is tantamount to encouraging fishermen to commit economic suicide.

While millions are expended on developing non-quota fisheries, such as deep water fisheries for orange roughy, scabbardfish and grenadier, or, as happened previously, on the development of a driftnet fishery for Albacore tuna, which became a vital industry in ports such as Dingle and Castletownbere, measures which would all take pressure off quota stocks, the Government has presided over the decimation of fishing opportunities in the form of ever lower quotas for deep water species and the ban on tuna drift netting, measures which will have disastrous effects on the fishing industry.

Having given a gift worth more than €100 million in the form of free tonnage — effectively fishing rights — to one operator in the fleet, the scandalous Atlantic Dawn factory freezer ship, and lobbied for the project against all best policy, the Government in 2004 allowed the owner of the vessel to abuse his position as a monopoly supplier to force pelagic fishermen in the business to shell out to the tune of €10,000 per gross tonne through its introduction of a flawed and deeply inequitable licensing scheme. In so doing, it forced fishermen to borrow vast sums of money to solve a problem of the Government's making in Brussels. Not only has the Atlantic Dawn become a byword for Irish Government incompetence, a negative ongoing factor in Brussels, it has forced over-capitalisation in the pelagic sector at home.

The slavish implementation of ridiculous new European Union regulations in respect of the weighing of pelagic fish at Irish ports — Ireland ran ahead of all other EU countries in its haste to implement the measure — has created the crazy position of water being effectively weighed as fish, wasting valuable pelagic quotas. The industry has issued repeated warnings that the effects of these measures would jeopardise valuable export markets for horse mackerel, for example, and effectively encourage Irish vessels to land in foreign ports. This is threatening the processing infrastructure and has resulted in Killybegs, our premier port, becoming a ghost town this winter, with factories closed and hundreds of people on the dole.

Government incompetence has resulted in fishing ports operating under a curfew system with restricted hours of landings. This is unacceptable for an industry which operates 24 hours per day, seven days per week and is dependent on weather, tides and market requirements.

The fishing industry is frustrated at the quagmire that is the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources. Senators may argue to the contrary but the reality is that there are inordinate delays in all stages of issuing licences, from licence offers through to issue. The system of issuing licences under the Fisheries (Amendment) Act 2003, far from being effective and transparent, is a complete abdication of responsibility by the Government. It is a cynical effort to make amends for strokes and deals of the past, while leaving civil servants carrying the can as best they can. Last year the Government raised harbour charges for Irish fishermen by over 350% at a time when fish prices at point of first sale have never been lower, insurance, fuel and compliance costs have risen to crippling levels and fishing opportunities are limited by ever-expanding and inappropriate regulation.