Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)

Many provisions available to people are not put into all legislation passed by the House. Once a right is given, we do not keep rewriting it, as we would be left with unmanageable chunks of legislation. The amendment is unnecessary. Under current legislation, a Circuit Court judge is free to refer a point of law to the High Court by way of a case stated. If such a referral is not made, the decision of the Circuit Court judge is final in respect of the facts and any appeal, whether it is against a conviction or dismissal. However, any aggrieved party could seek a judicial review of a Circuit Court decision by the High Court on legal grounds. There is no need to specify this in legislation as it is an existing right. For this reason, I will not include the provisions of the amendment in the Bill.

I acknowledge Senator McHugh's comments on the significant investment in the fishing industry by the State and fishermen. Considerable efforts have been made in different areas to try to ensure we have a modern fishing fleet with the necessary equipment, an aim the Government has strongly supported. The difficulty is that perhaps the EU did not commence its fishery protection measures in time. Now that everything has become so efficient from a fishing point of view, scientific advice indicates that we are in serious danger of depleting our stocks below conservation levels across a range of species. We can ignore that advice and decide not to do anything about the matter, but all of the investment will be useless in four or five years time and probably less in respect of some species. The alternative would be to lower the quotas, which would cause a problem for the fishermen in the short term, have more stringent fishery protections and hope that we can conserve stocks for a longer period of time.

The message must get through to the cowboys in the industry that they cannot hope to get away with depleting stocks and exceeding conservation limits willy-nilly. I agree with Senator McHugh that we must stamp out those activities. The industry and fishermen's organisations must take the lead, as they cannot be led by the nose by people they know in their heart of hearts are abusing that position and causing problems for genuine fishermen. If they do not stand up against such people, there will be no future for anyone in the industry.

I look forward to meeting with the fishermen's organisations to talk about the future and how we might ensure that people abide by the law, quotas are respected and people are helped to survive and make decent livings. It will not be easy to do so unless everyone agrees on a shared vision for the future and puts this matter to the forefront of the debate, particularly over the next four or five years. According to the scientific evidence I have seen, we are speaking about a window of four or five years in which to try to salvage an industry in the long term.

This legislation is required to ensure that the Irish or foreign people — I accept the points made by Senators on this matter — who do not share this vision and want to abuse their positions because they may have more efficient equipment or better methods of fishing are not allowed to do so to the disadvantage of everyone else. The sooner we sit down to develop a shared vision, the better. It will require leadership, not just mine or that of my Department but also that of the fishermen's organisations and fishermen themselves. I hope that leadership will be forthcoming.