Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister of State for his response in regard to the passenger steamer and our own Navy which makes sense to me. It would be worthwhile looking at my point about the need to consider defining the crew of the ship because although the only person on the vessel given legal definition is the master of the ship, in different parts of the legislation other personnel are referred to in different ways. I shall give one example to show that my point merits consideration. At different stages in Part 6 of the Bill reference is made to the ship's crew. There might be benefit in defining this crew. Is it people who are on the ship for a continuous period or does the definition cover those who merely set foot on the ship? A vessel might be performing some kind of commercial service where there would be high turnover in the personnel on board and so on.

There might be nothing to this but given that many other terms in the Bill are so rigorously defined it strikes me as odd that we define only one person on the ship, namely, the master while other people on the ship are given different definitions in other parts of the Bill. There is no consistency or harmonisation in the definitions. I shall leave this with the Minister and perhaps we can look at it on Final Stage.