Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Or protected. The injustice of the Common Fisheries Policy is an argument for another day but today we have a blank canvas to protect an immense resource, particularly the bottom mussel industry. It should be a resource for Irish citizens. Natural resources are things we have to protect and the legislation the Minister is introducing brings back a loophole that can be exploited by foreign multinationals to plunder a natural resource belonging to the Irish people under the guise of all-Ireland co-operation. That is just wrong.

The voisinageletters of the British side state, "This arrangement will apply as long as the authorities in the Republic of Ireland continue to accord to Northern Irish vessels the same treatment as they would accord to vessels of the Republic of Ireland in the waters around the coast of the Republic." However, following the Supreme Court decision there is no voisinagearrangement any more. There is no issue of reciprocity and we have a blank canvas which we need to fill out in a fair way for all our fishermen around the coast of Ireland. I ask the Minister to withdraw this legislation and nobody would object if he did. He could withdraw it for a number of months to allow our committee to bring in the relevant stakeholders and to deal with the issue in a thoughtful way.