Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. I thought Senator O'Sullivan was going to launch into a version of "Pirates of Penzance" when he gave his romantic view of the sea. A line from the song could go something like this "stick to your desk and never go to sea, and you can be the leader of the Queen's Navee".

I thank the Minister for his presentation. Would registering small craft have an impact on safety? Road vehicles have been registered for years yet we must still mount a substantial road safety campaign, including one under the Minister's watch, in order to get deaths that numbered 650 at their peak down to 162, and latterly 190. Visitors may find registration a nuisance. One of points used by Bord Fáilte to sell Ireland as a tourism destination is that one does not require registration when one docks in some of the ports on the south coast. Is the registration of small craft worth it? Will the provision just lead to a large amount of bureaucracy?

Section 23 provides for the temporary registration of recreational craft under 24 m and other sections provide for the registration of craft greater than 24 m. If there is a problem with jet skis then it is a problem for the Irish Coast Guard and the Garda and simply registering them will not make a difference.

The Minister has said that the ports of registration would be standardised but Tralee is listed in Schedule 3. As Senator O'Sullivan has confirmed, it would be pretty hard to get a boat into Tralee to register it at this stage because the canal between Blennerville and Tralee silted up long ago. The list needs to be updated. It would be fairly difficult to get any craft into Westport for registration because the draft is pretty shallow. As the Minister has said, the list is outdated but I am sure that he will update it soon.

Registration and bureaucracy will do a certain amount to improve safety. However, we have found that we need a functioning insurance industry in this country. The industry should police the project and impose heavy premiums on people who make lots of insurance claims. We seem to have an inefficient insurance industry which is frequently, with levies on the rest of the industry, bailed out by the Government. In discussions between the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and the industry, for example, we ought to require a much higher level of performance than heretofore. The Minister for Finance and the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, have referred to implementing improvements to reduce flooding but it takes an awful lot of time for such measures to be reflected in premiums. A large number of people act in a safe manner but if people do not then the insurance industry should help us to rid us of the latter category.

Another fear is that if we are too strict on people they will opt for flags of convenience, as Senator O'Sullivan has said. Does the Minister have plans, at the next stage, to deal with their operations when they come to Irish ports? We have 3,200 registered craft now. Does he have in mind the anticipated size of the register? Will he require extra resources or extra workforce for same?

Before we embark on this we should know the administrative burden we are taking on. When I asked people in the industry who, as Senator Ned O'Sullivan said, are broadly in support of what the Minister is doing, they asked that we ratify the Cape Town treaty which, I gather, is a convention on international interests in mobile equipment and that is being extended to include ships. Perhaps at the next Stage the Minister would report as to whether there are any developments in that area.

I welcome the Bill and the presentation by the Minister and wish him plain sailing in bringing forward the legislation.