Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, to the Chamber. I am seeking a statement from the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Marine on the legislation that enforces the removal of abandoned vessels from Irish waters and what plans, if any, there are to strengthen that legislation to deal with the extensive occurrence of vessels being abandoned.

This is an important issue and a legacy issue in many rural communities. There is a blight in our territorial waters.In many areas, vessels have been abandoned for decades. Unfortunately, legislation has not been strong enough and local authorities have not been empowered with financing and a legislative mandate to ensure that the issue can be addressed.

This matter came to a head a year ago when a major vessel of nearly 2,500 tonnes ran aground at Ballycotton, County Cork. It still lies there. It is a serious issue for the local authority and local community, and how we deal with it will be an important question for Ireland. What happened in Ballycotton is an extreme example, but vessels are constantly being abandoned at piers and in the waters of coastal communities. There seems to be very little progress, if any, on ensuring that they are moved.

We need a genuine debate with the Department about how it will deal with this matter, which is a blight and littering of a different nature. If there were cars abandoned all over our roads, we would not leave them there. We are not empowering anyone or putting financial measures in place to ensure that we can clean up our seas. We have debated removing sea litter from our coasts, but we have had a poor debate about how to deal with this legacy issue of abandoned vessels. I need to see movement from the Government accordingly. That would involve legislation, budgets and a different mentality about how we will deal with the issue. In this Commencement matter, I am primarily trying to ensure that the Government is aware that this legacy issue is affecting coastal communities the length and breadth of our country and that nothing has been done about it for decades. We need to see movement. I hope that we can start a conversation this morning and put appropriate legislation and moneys in place to ensure that last year's extreme event in Ballycotton is not repeated and, more importantly, the legacy issues of recent decades can be cleaned up.