Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am deeply concerned about a Dutch super trawler which is six times longer than this room which is approximately 24 m long; it is one of the biggest super trawlers ever to fish in Irish waters and concerns about it have been raised nationally and elsewhere in Europe. A former Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, SFPA, officer is deeply concerned about the damage it can do to Irish stock. Conservation groups are also concerned about the damage it can do to whale and dolphin numbers because it can hoover everything up. I question its entitlement to fish in Irish waters. Apparently, it has a certain quota as a result of swapping a quota with Lithuania. It is grossly unfair, at a time when our fishermen have been starved of a quota, that a quota swap with Lithuania enables a super-trawler which was banished from Australian waters because of the damage it had done to fish in our waters. I sometimes preach ad nauseam about the difficulties facing Irish inshore fishermen. Will the Leader convey my deep concerns to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and ask him to send a naval officer, with a SFPA officer to board the vessel, as such officers are entitled to do under the Sea-Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act 2006, to monitor what is happening? This is critical to give some level of comfort to hard-pressed Irish fishermen who have little, if any, quota. It is a factory ship on which fish is chopped up, frozen or canned and the vessel can hoover up more fish in one week than the entire whitefish fleet in an area stretching from Rosaveel to Castletownbeare and Dunmore East and beyond. Such vessels should be banned outright. The sooner we get this vessel out of Irish waters the happier I will be.