Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome the Minister of State to the House to discuss the purpose of this Bill, as he has outlined. That purpose is to update and set out in one stand-alone enactment the law relating to the State's maritime jurisdiction, including by giving further effect to relevant provisions of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to repeal sections 2 and 3 of the Continental Shelf Act 1968 and Part 3 of the Sea-Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act 2006, and to provide for related matters.

As the Minister of State outlined, the Bill seems to be very technical. Like the previous two speakers, I will concentrate on how we defend the jurisdiction and the problems with the Naval Service. I bring to the attention of the Minister of State an article in The Irish Timeslast Friday with a headline to the effect that this State had to rely on EU ships to patrol fishing waters due to naval shortages. The article went on to say fishery protection is the core role of the Naval Service, which has been hit particularly hard, as others have said, by the manpower crisis impacting the entire Defence Forces. Last year alone, there was a 25% decrease in the number of fishery patrols carried out by the Naval Service compared with 2019.The article states that according to the submission by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, to the commission on the future of the Defence Forces, "the situation has continued to deteriorate this year, at the same time as the departure of the UK from the EU has increased the need for fishery patrols in Ireland's Exclusive Economic Zone which extends to 200 miles off shore". In its submission to the commission, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine stated that "The high-level assessment of the level of Naval and Air Corps activity in fisheries control operations is that it has been reducing over the past number of years".

I ask the Minister of State to confirm what the article further states, which has been referenced previously, that:

The European Commission recently ordered a formal administrative inquiry into Ireland’s ability to enforce European fishery regulations. It found Irish systems to be “unsatisfactory”. As a result the Commission “put forward a specific package of measures to address the issues raised,” the department said.

These findings are under “active consideration” by the Government ahead of negotiations with the Commission on the matter.

The Department went on to state "Ireland’s fishing waters are the most productive in the EU and the State has a legal responsibility to monitor and control fishing activity in its 200 mile exclusive zone". On that point, when we are discussing our maritime jurisdiction, the Minister of State might confirm the current status of Rockall in respect of Irish fisheries and whether they are able to use and indeed fish off that area.

The article also noted that "Almost half a billion euro worth of fish is landed each year from the Irish zone, with Ireland taking 42 per cent of this by weight." As has already been stated in this debate, the Irish fishing industry employs 14,000 people and is worth €653 million in exports. The Naval Service and Air Corps also have a legal responsibility to monitor the zone.

Today we are discussing the State’s maritime jurisdiction. If we do not address the problems highlighted in this article and the reports that I and my Labour Party colleagues have received in respect of the continuing problems with our Naval Service, we will not be able to protect this jurisdiction. We will not be able to offer the protection that our fishing industry needs. That simply not good enough at this particular time.