Walsh strongly criticises fisheries Bill

Former agriculture minister Joe Walsh expressed "serious doubts about the mentality" of those who drafted controversial fisheries legislation currently before the Dáil.

Mr Walsh said the "hostility required to include some sections" of the Sea Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Bill was "mind-boggling". Hitting out at provisions for the confiscation of fishing catches and gear, the Cork South West TD said he knew of no other industry where this would happen.

"Farmers would not have their milking parlours, fattening units or their wherewithal confiscated, nor would truck drivers have their means of livelihood confiscated. It just would not happen."

Mr Walsh's constituency includes coastal fishing communities and he joins a growing list of Government deputies opposed to much of the legislation, which allows for multiple penalties for fishery offences with individual fines of up to €100,000.

Fisheries offences are dealt with through the criminal courts while in other jurisdictions they are administrative fines.

The Bill also includes a provision to allow the Naval Service to fire into a fishing vessel rather than across the bow in certain circumstances, but Minister of State for Marine Pat "The Cope" Gallagher promised to introduce an amendment to prevent this.

Mr Walsh told the Dáil that fishermen were wondering if the Bill "is the final nail in the coffin of the industry" and he wished "some of the people drafting the relevant regulations would take a trip to sea now and again to note the extent of the danger and difficulties fishermen must endure.

"People do not fully appreciate the isolated nature of our coastal communities. Fishing is central to the economic and social lives of many coastal regions. If these areas did not have fishing, there would be no other source of employment."

He also described as a "real beauty" the provision for the creation of the post of seafood manager within the department.

"The holder of this position will be answerable only to the secretary general; the minister would be neutered and sidelined. If we table a parliamentary question, we will be told the minister has no official responsibility for the matter and can wash his or her hands of it.

"That is not the way modern democracy should work."

Padraic McCormack (FG, Galway West) expressed his outrage at the Bill, which was "simply a mixture of extreme and over-the-top measures".

He said the Government did not seem to know what it was doing on fisheries policy. In heated exchanges with Mr Gallagher, he said he had not seen such opposition to a Bill since the rod licence legislation. But the Minister retorted that he was "taking the nails out of the coffin that the deputy's party hammered in" when in 1983 it signed up to the Common Fisheries Policy.

Earlier, Green Party TD Éamon Ryan (Dublin South) asked if the Government would pass the Bill before Christmas. Tánaiste Mary Harney said she believed the committee stage would be taken in January and she understood it was the "wish of most parties in the House" not to enact the legislation.

Mr Ryan, whose party supports the legislation, said "the Government appears utterly divided on it". There was "widespread fraud within our sea fisheries", that process had been extended by "corrupting the political system" and there was now an inability to prosecute the widespread fraud cases in the fisheries sector, he said.