Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

-----but this image is from 2016, a period which mostly predates the Supreme Court judgment at the end of 2016, which stated quite clearly that this had no legislative foundation and that, therefore, from that date, any fishing by Northern Irish vessels in the Republic of Ireland's zero to six nautical mile zone was not lawful. It is a moot point whether there is any reciprocal arrangement in place now at all because once the arrangement is undermined and once it finishes, surely, by definition, the reciprocal arrangement falls as well. I am very concerned about the haste with which the Minister is moving to give this legislative foundation when there is absolutely no requirement to do so and the Supreme Court has not said there is a requirement to do so. The Supreme Court would never tell the Legislature, given the division of powers in the Constitution, that we must legislate in a certain way. It is a ministerial decision, an Executive decision, to propose legislation to this House, and this is legislation about which we are very concerned.

The point the Minister made earlier about the ownership model moving on is very interesting, and it has moved on from the 1960s. If the ownership model has moved on and is more complex now than it was in the 1960s, why are we seeking to legislate for an arrangement that was applied in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and so on? This is absolutely open to exploitation and abuse and is not in the interests of Irish fishing vessels and the Irish fishing industry. The system has moved on and we are trying now to legislate for an arrangement that was in place in the 1960s and reflects 1960s behaviour and a 1960s industry, not an industry dominated, as it is now, by large corporations. Those corporations have been active in Irish waters and have been foreign-owned. They may very well have had licences from the North. I remain to be convinced about that but I accept what the Minister says at face value and I accept his bona fides in that regard. It is very interesting that a vessel can be owned by a company in the United Kingdom but is required to get a mussel licence from Northern Ireland to access mussel seed in Republic of Ireland waters in that zero to six nautical mile zone. I am not convinced the Minister has answered my earlier question about reassuring me as to how we can have a proper registration system to establish the bona fides of Northern Irish vessels fishing down here. This confuses me. We are co-opting out management of this to another nation because we do not appear to be able ourselves to define what is Northern Irish-owned and operated and what is Northern Irish-registered. That will be someone else's problem, it appears to me, and that is no way to do business.

I will conclude by saying something I said the other day. It is absolutely bizarre and reckless, although the Minister clearly does not agree, that we would make and copper-fasten arrangements such as this in our legislation a matter of days or a week before the triggering of Article 50 and the Brexit negotiations. I do not support it.