Inland and Marine Fisheries: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-04 ============================================================ Gerard P. Craughwell (IND), Labour Panel The Minister of State is welcome to the House. This is the first time I have addressed him in this House since his elevation, so I congratulate him on that. I would like to start off on a positive note. Having been with the Minister of State among coastal communities, I do believe that he has a natural empathy with the fishing community in Ireland. I also believe that when he returned from Europe following the recent negotiations, he was as hurt as any of the fishing families in the country by what has happened. For generations, this country has suffered in the fisheries area, and it is very difficult for fishing communities to understand. Before I go on to anything else, I want to talk about the Gaffney family and the Mary Kate down in Arklow. The Minister of State might remember that particular incident when the trawler was taken out of service because it was dangerous. That family have suffered severe financial loss because of bureaucratic - I do not know what one would call it. Nobody wants to take responsibility for the loss to the family. I do not know where that case stands right now. I do know that the fisheries committee has been asked to look into it again and we might come back to the Minister of State on that. I just want to make note of that. The Minister of State might throw a bit of research into it himself. Today, believe it or not, I want to discuss defence infrastructure in relation to the inland and marine fisheries. Without funding the authorities that are responsible for enforcing laws in this area, there will be a knock-on effect in other regulatory bodies. When we talk about fisheries protection, with one naval vessel at sea in the Atlantic at any given time, it is simply not possible to monitor illegal fishing that is taking place. The Air Corps does the best it can but, again, it has limited capacity for patrolling the area. In the Minister of State's own County Clare, there is a company manufacturing drones in Shannon. We could have much greater protection of the Atlantic and many more, shall we say, seeing eyes in the Atlantic if we were to use indigenous industry manufacturing drones and have those drones patrolling the Atlantic. We could have that happening on a 24-hour-per-day basis. With €1.7 billion being spent in defence, why in God's name would we not spend some of it in our own country? The Minister of State might go to Shannon and visit that company. I am sure he has been there already, but he might go and visit it again to see what it might be able to do in the area of fisheries. Inland fisheries depend on search and rescue for crisis situations. We saw that we simply do not fund the search and rescue system well enough. The Minister of State will know from his last interaction with me on this in the previous Parliament that it was a matter dear to my heart. He and I spoke on it often. He had his own concerns. He visited a number of the SAR sites. We have got to look at that again and at how we negotiate those contracts into the future. We must have four or five Naval Service ships at sea or top cover using drones. Why not do it? Everybody else is doing it. It is happening in the Middle East and in many other countries. Drones protect life because they do not have pilots and the Naval Service is not at risk. It is something that I would ask him to look into. I say this because there is a lack of strategic thinking on the part of the Government, and it has reduced our capability. For example, there is no maritime policy that I am aware of and that is something our committee is working on at the moment. Other countries have expressed concern regarding our ability to protect our own waters. Last year, the Japanese Prime Minister stated that Japan is deeply concerned at the lack of defence in the country, particularly when it comes to Internet cables and the like. I know that is slightly away from fishing, but it is all part of the maritime domain, as it were. I have harped on a bit about the Naval Service. We are in trouble unless we have a single authority responsible for everything at sea. The Garda has responsibility for undersea cables and the navy is responsible for fisheries and all sorts of other things. We really do need one single Department with control over that area. There are also consequences for investigations. They must be immediate. We saw that with the crash of 116, which was vital to the north west of the country. My colleague from Fine Gael has already expressed his own concern, and I am sure he will do it today, about the need for helicopter services in the county of Donegal - the forgotten county in the north west. Donegal has one of the largest fishing fleets in the country. There is a massive harbour up there. I will leave it to my colleague to talk about that, but we do need to ensure that we have a Naval Service on the north-west coast, and right over to the north east, keeping an eye on what is going on in the area. I am looking for greater empowerment of the Air Corps and of the Naval Service, and I am looking for new thinking with respect to how we protect the Atlantic and our fisheries. We can do that with modern technology and drone technology. My final point on fisheries affairs is that unless we get our national security right, all of the Minister of State's efforts will go to waste. He is fighting hard to preserve as much of the fishing stock as he possibly can, and if we do not have eyes on the sea to see what is going on, we cannot stop rogue countries coming in and stealing the stock. It is a simple as that. We can put nice words around it, but if they are fishing illegally in there, they need to be arrested and brought to heel. I know the Minister of State will do that. In summing up, I believe that the Minister of State has a deep interest in the sea. His roots in the west probably give him that. He has empathy with the fishing community. I would like to see him try to drive more innovative strategic thinking when it comes to the Atlantic in particular. The same technology would work on the east coast. It would be cheap in the grand scheme of things. Not only that, it would send jobs into west Clare and we would see massive improvement in the overall protection and the overall number of eyes on the sea off the west coast. He might try to talk to his colleagues in the Department of Defence on that. Let us go to the drone manufacturer in Shannon, or any other drone manufacturer, to see what technology they have, see what is there that can be used and let us go and start using it. We do not need people out in the Atlantic, what we need is eyes, and drones can do that. I will leave it at that. Once again, I thank the Minister of State for being here. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-04/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:35+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-04