Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I take great pleasure in seconding Senator Ó Domhnaill's Bill during Private Members' time. It is an old issue with me and I could write a thesis on the Sea-Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act 2006. Some of the effects and implementation of that Bill has halted me since that time, although on Committee Stage we managed to have 113 amendments. Some of those were technical or Government amendments. There was widespread revolt against the measures that, as Senator Ó Domhnaill termed it, criminalised fishermen for relatively small offences. To be technically correct, the Bill was not the first to introduce criminal sanctions, as the Fisheries (Consolidation) Bill 1959 had criminal sanctions for various offences.

The Fisheries (Consolidation) Act of 1959 had criminal sanctions for various offences and to say that there would never be criminal sanctions for serious fishing breaches would be a joke. We will never have that utopian situation. We have a problem out there and while this Bill is not a panacea for all of the ills we face in the fishing industry, it will address some of them. The former Minister gave me and others who are no longer Members of this House, a clear commitment that after three years, if certain aspects of the Bill were not working or were too severe and draconian, he would revisit it. That did not happen. The Fine Gael Party at that time gave clear commitments, particularly to the lobbyists from coastal communities that, once in office, it would revoke the entire Bill. I do not think that is possible. However, it is possible to ameliorate some of the severe measures in the legislation and to ensure that relatively minor offences are dealt with fairly. Indeed, at the time of the debate on the legislation, on the suggestion of myself and others, the idea of the District Court dealing with minor offences was introduced.

I have been involved with the fishing industry since I was a garsún and my family has been involved all the way back to my great, great grandfather's time. I have never seen such a droch mheas or lack of belief in the future of the fishing industry. I am not being political in saying this or criticising the Minister. There is a general level of despair which is growing, mainly because of the issue of quotas, which I will not go into now because the Leader has promised a debate on it before Christmas. There are grave concerns about the future for small, inshore fishermen and the damage that SACs will do to them. There is a lack of trust among fishing organisations in politicians generally, Ministers in particular, including the current Minister, and the Department. That must be healed if at all possible. If the SFPA really wanted to implement the full letter of the law of this Bill and of the legislation that we as Oireachtas Members hold guard over, every fishing vessel from Killybegs to Kerry, Cork and around to Howth would be tied up. Fishermen acknowledge that and they recognise that the SFPA operates as a "good cop" in as far as it can. However, the situation is very serious.

The Minister has to go to Europe again in December to negotiate on the quotas. It is like the three-card trick - we win one, we lose one and we see what Europe will give us. The fishing industry is supporting approximately 12,000 jobs, directly and indirectly. There was a plan in the 1990s to develop our aquaculture industry with a view to producing 25,000 tonnes per annum. I am not going to dwell on that tonight because it is another day's work. There is absolutely no doubt that some of the measures in the 2006 Act must be revisited. I hope that when the Minister responds to this debate, he will at least accept the thrust and principle of this Bill.

The easiest thing for me, having lost my Dáil seat in 2007 and having been hammered by the fishing communities of West Cork, would be to fold my tent up and move on but that is not the way I should represent the people of coastal communities. I have met representatives of many fishing organisations while touring the country with Senator Ó Domhnaill, visiting Donegal, Ros An Mhíl, Waterford and Cork, among other places. The absolute frustration and lack of belief in a future for the fishing industry we encountered is very concerning. This is true of the big-boat fishermen, the inshore fishermen and those operating the processing factories. At one stage, there were 11 or 12 processing factories along our coast but now there are only four. I would don the green jersey with the Minister in the context of extracting better quotas from Europe. I also believe that we would enhance our exports of fish by having value-added processing onshore, thus creating more jobs and making the industry viable.

Fishermen get extremely frustrated when they are tied up in port - as happened on Kilmore Quay recently, with several boats tied up - while at the same time off our coastline foreign vessels are catching species of fish which Irish boats are prohibited from catching, or for which they have severely restricted quotas. That is a very serious issue although I do not wish to dwell on it now.

I support what Senator Ó Domhnaill has said in this debate. I will not repeat ---