Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I reject that. This is a new scheme that was started following the work of the previous Government. Four Departments were required to implement it. There is cross-departmental co-operation on it and there is a memorandum of understanding. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine's role is to hold the numbers in the depository and to deal with matters relating to the fishing sector.I have comments on five of the key recommendations. One recommendation is that a single Government Department takes responsibility for the fishing industry. I do not think that is possible. Another is that vessels under 15 m should be included in the scheme. The reason they were not included in the first place is that vessels under 15 m tend to be smaller and generally provide local employment. It was not intended that this scheme be open to all fishing boats around the country. It was felt that some should be reserved for local employment. As someone who chaired a committee in the last Oireachtas which considered the role of coastal and island communities in the small fishing sector, the whole idea was that we would provide local employment for local people. The reconstituted task force should be considered but I am not sure that it should run in the way the Senator envisages. The report recommends that permissions be linked to the employee and not the specific vessel or owner. In that case the contract would be gone and it would be a wholly different scheme. It would not be the scheme that is in place.

Finally, it is recommended that applications should be made directly to a central registry that is open to the public. This scheme as designed is based on a contract between an individual who is a non-EEA citizen and an owner. That contract has to be signed by a solicitor, witnessed and given legal status before it can go to the Department of Justice and Equality and before that permission can be issued. The Senator is talking about designing a completely new scheme. He wants to do this before the current scheme is fine-tuned and made work. On eliminating trafficking, I have no doubt that the trafficking dealt with in recent media coverage relates to people who are not part of this scheme. That is part of the problem. They came in a different way. They were not participants in the scheme in the first place and they should be dealt with by the law. The Garda Síochána is the appropriate authority to deal with that particular scenario.