Sea-Fisheries (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2021: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2021-09-21 ============================================================ Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (SF), Donegal I will be sharing time with my colleague, Deputy Carthy. Where do I start with all of this? The Minister of State knows that this has been a deeply controversial saga. It has gone to the Supreme Court and the previous Ministers and the Department were found to have wronged fishermen on a number of occasions. They repeatedly did not listen to the industry. If they had listened, what the industry has been saying is that it of course supports the implementation of a penalty points scheme but it has to be fair, just and equitable. That is what they have said right throughout. I am going to go through some of their main concerns. As the Minister of State knows, the previous Minister, Deputy Creed, attempted to bring in a statutory instrument which, for the first time in the history of the State, was voted down in this House. It was the then Fianna Fáil spokesperson on the marine, Pat the Cope Gallagher, who brought in that annulment motion. It won the support of the House and the statutory instrument was annulled. That was the right thing to do. Those of us who supported that annulment motion were all shocked to see the Taoiseach, who was then the acting Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, introduce a statutory instrument identical to the one that was voted out by this House. He went against his own previous spokesperson on the marine, Pat the Cope Gallagher, who I believe listened to the industry, worked with it and defined solid solutions. He actually presented a solution to the Department officials and the Minister but he was ignored. It was shocking that his own Taoiseach ignored him and then the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, brought that statutory instrument forward again. We then brought an annulment motion that, unfortunately, was not successful to try to stop it. Did the Government learn any lessons from that whole episode? Absolutely not. It has now brought in this legislation, which has the same serious flaws in it as the statutory instrument that is now operational. It brought this legislation, which is fundamentally flawed, to the Oireachtas committee and that all-party committee corresponded with the Minister and pointed out two issues in particular. The first is the issue of the balance of probabilities. What person or citizen in this State would accept a conviction that could have such a detrimental impact on their livelihood on the balance of probabilities, rather than on the threshold that we all understand, which is that of beyond a reasonable doubt? It is extraordinary that the Government would allow that threshold. That says it all about the attitude of some people in officialdom in Ireland, who I believe have a view that fishermen are guilty until proven innocent. It is a criminalisation of a whole industry when there is a threshold of the balance of probabilities rather than beyond a reasonable doubt. If that was not good enough, there is also the fact that people can only appeal to the High Court on a point of law. This issue has been through the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court found that a person has the right to appeal when it impacts on their livelihood. That would be the vessel owner in the case of the statutory instrument and the master of the vessel in this case. However, they can only appeal to the High Court on a point of law. That is bad enough but it gets worse. If a person did go to the High Court on that point of law and was successful, that would not mean the points would be removed. It is absolutely extraordinary. I have said this at the committee. Imagine if we told our citizens that if a speed van or a garda allegedly caught them speeding while driving along in their car and they decided to take it to court and won their case, the points would still stay on their licence. If we had a law like that people would be in uproar throughout the land and it would not see the light of day but that is how we treat our fishermen. I assume the Minister of State and the officials have read the submissions from the various fishing organisations to the Oireachtas committee. All these points were put forward again in those submissions, but did the Government listen to the fishing organisations, or the all-party committee that corresponded with it and expressed profound concern about these aspects of this legislation? The answer is "No". It did not listen. Here we are now with flawed legislation that is offensive to fishermen up and down the coast. Sinn Féin will oppose it at every Stage and will seek to put in amendments to get the Government to see sense, to treat the fishermen with respect and to bring in a points system that is fair, just and equitable. --- 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/dail/2021-09-21/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:35+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-09-21