David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I hope the Cathaoirleach will accept that, since virtually all of the amendments have been grouped together, we must be given some latitude to wander around a little. I will not be too long but I have certain things to say about the Bill. I am very concerned that this Government sees the beef deal as more important than fishing and I am very much afraid that, to some extent, fishing may be sold out again, as it always has been.

The voisinageagreement shows good neighbourliness but I cannot say the Northern Ireland trawlers that were caught plundering fish off the coast of Drogheda have been good neighbours. I understand their crews have been filmed declawing crabs that were under the size limits. I would not say they are terribly good neighbours. As for Michael Gove, who would believe the Lord's Prayer out of his pursed-up little mouth after his performance on Brexit? I would not trust a single word out of him.

This all comes about in the aftermath of a Supreme Court judgment to which I will briefly refer. On 27 October 2016, the Supreme Court issued a judgment in a case taken by a number of mussel seed fishermen which found that fishing by Northern Ireland boats within the nought to six nautical mile zone of the territorial waters of the State under the voisinagearrangements is not permitted by law.

Turning to the issues of mussels, eels, etc., I draw the Minister's attention to a correspondent of mine who had three commercial eel fishing licences, two in the north-west fishery region and one in the Galway fishery region. When the fishing ban was introduced, his fishing here became redundant. He is badly stuck. I understand that the Minister says that, in the current circumstances, there is no compelling legal case for compensation where the State makes ex gratiapayments and so on. I ask him to take another look at this.

We have a situation whereby, within the nought to six mile nautical zone, the voisinageagreement is not permitted by law. The central aspect of this entire Bill is given to us in the explanatory and financial memorandum, which states:

Section 1of the Bill amends section 10 of the Sea-Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act 2006 to continue to assert Ireland's exclusive right to fish within the exclusive fishery limits of the State by maintaining previous provisions but also explicitly provides for access to fish by sea-fishing boats owned and operated in Northern Ireland within 0 - 6 nautical miles of the baseline of the State's exclusive fishery limits.

The Minister indicated that he had negotiations with some of the fisheries organisations but he certainly did not engage with all of them. My information is that there are sections of this industry with which he has not consulted at all. The Minister introduced this Bill in its previous incarnation two years ago and, since then, all the fishing organisations have presented serious objections about it to Oireachtas committees.

The Minister read letters from Mr. Eustice and Mr. Gove. I am very concerned about the withdrawal from the Common Fisheries Policy and the two-year withdrawal process from the London fisheries agreement because there is still a considerable risk that this opens up the Irish coastal fishing industry to exploitation by the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Belgians and boats from other European Union countries. I say that on the basis of the following evidence. The UK is a signatory to the London Fisheries Convention. Article 8, section 1 of that convention states:

Once a contracting party applies the regime described in articles 2 to 6, any right to fish which it may thereafter grant to a state not a contracting party shall extend automatically to the other contracting parties, whether or not they could claim this right by virtue of habitual fishing, to the extent that the state not a contracting party avails itself effectively and habitually of that right.

Section 2 states, "If a contracting party which has established the regime described in articles 2 to 6 should grant to another contracting party any right to fish which the latter cannot claim under articles 3 and 4, the same right shall extend automatically to all other contracting parties." The Minister has not persuaded me that this is not actually the situation. I would be very happy if he would.