Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----if he will outline the criteria and the costs involved and compare them with rates in other countries.

We should encourage growth in the merchant fleet and I hope we can attract as many as possible to register under the Irish flag.

As I stated earlier, our merchant fleet is very small compared with other countries, such as those of Holland, Germany and Denmark. They have considerably more ships, and it has often struck me that we need to provide incentives in this regard. Previous Governments did so in the late 1980s with the extension of the business expansion scheme to shipping. Many people probably do not realise that Irish Ferries grew from that process. It was a particularly good investment, and I have calculated that if a person put in the £25,000 per year allowed, or £50,000 over two years, half of it would have been returned through the tax process and the investment would have grown to approximately £1 million if the shares had been held. It was a particularly attractive investment for anybody with the foresight to do it. I did not, although I invested in another coastal shipping operation, which did fine. It was attached to the major private merchant fleet in the country, which is Arklow Shipping. I am sure the Minister is familiar with it and the tremendous job that Mr. James Tyrrell did as managing director of the company when he took over as a young man many decades ago. It had a small fleet of very small ships carrying 300, 400 or 500 tonnes. The ships were frequent visitors to the port at New Ross with many products, and the boats would be tied up on a Friday evening and return to sea on Monday. When Mr. Tyrrell took charge that changed, as his philosophy was that ships were made for being at sea rather than staying in ports. Dublin Shipping had a fleet of tankers operating between various ports in Ireland, particularly Whitegate, distributing oil around the country. There is scope to develop the trade.

I have some questions on the Bill. I note that first registrations will expire after five years, and on renewal there will be a ten-year registration. What is the logic behind the initial five-year registration? The Department and the Minister of the day will be the recipient of applications, but why is this not being independently run? Foreign earnings form a major part of this issue, as this equates to invisible exports. The bigger the fleet, the more employment it will bring. Most of the earnings will be foreign, as the trade will occur all over Europe. The current fleet, for example, may return to Ireland only periodically as it transports goods between different European countries. It was a pity to allow Irish Shipping to go, as it had a niche, particularly with regard to larger vessels.

I encourage the Minister to set up a group to examine what can be done. It could consider what happened with the business expansion scheme and its achievements to see what we can do today to incentivise investment, particularly heavy capital investment, and get people into the business to expand the fleet. There should be consideration of how to encourage the growth of the national fleet, with the beneficial foreign earnings and employment that would come about. It should be part of our planned recovery, and I support the Minister in such an endeavour.