Gerard P. Craughwell presses minister on fisheries crisis

Minister, you could say Ireland has done very well at being a member of the European community, except for fisheries. Since I was a boy, I've heard the fisheries cry at being hard done by. Indeed, when I grew up in Galway, the harbour was a busy place most evenings when the trawlers came in selling their cash. I don't see too many trawlers down there now. As I look around the country, there are only a few harbours with trawlers. Any time we hit a crisis, there's talk about putting together a committee chaired by an independent chairman with a job to report. So the question is, when will the chairman be appointed? What is the time frame for that particular group? I'm not sure what funding can be put in place to save fish factories if there is no fish coming in. I'm not sure how we will protect. You yourself, Minister, I met you down in the west. You've been up to Donegal and various other places. You know the livelihoods that depend on this. So that's the first one. When will the chair be appointed? How soon can we expect some sort of a report? Secondly, you mentioned staffing, that your department is understaffed when it comes to dealing with issues like this. Has a case been put to Deeper to allow you to increase your staff? Has the business case been put to Deeper? Because God knows Deeper, when they get their hands on something, can delay it for months and years in some cases. So what sort of cooperation are you getting there? I'm going to leave it at that. I know there are people here from fishing communities who will want to ask a lot more questions. Thanks very much, Senator. I do know your interest because I have met you on a number of occasions when I visited a number of fisheries harbours and you do, as a senator, keep in very regular contact with your electorate who are councillors who many of them have significant interest there. So your presence here and your interest is well recognised. I wouldn't disagree with your characterisation about how well Ireland has done from our presence in Europe. But I think when you look at the way other sectors of our society have developed under our membership of the European Union, it is fair to say that our fishing sector has not followed that trajectory. And that, I suppose, has a lot to do with where the fishing sector was at when we joined the Union. You could argue the same relation to farming and other sectors, but I remember my late colleague and a former minister for the Marine, Brendan Daly, who characterised our fishing fleet as being small and near shore when we joined. Whilst we have expanded a little bit, we haven't done as well as other sectors. And I think that's largely because of the decisions that were taken to expand EU waters more broadly. And those very bountiful seas that were the exclusive competence of Ireland at a stage now have others in there. Other countries who had more developed fleets were better able to exploit that more quickly. So there's a context to all of that. You asked the question about the independent chairman and chairman. It would be my hope to do that this week. And then we've got put together terms of reference, which we've been working on for a while, as I had shared with you. We knew largely this was coming. You then talk about what kind of supports can be put in place. Well, we still have about 120,000 tonnes that we can process. I'd like to look at ways of how we can encourage boats that steam past some of our ports to go back to their native countries with fish to process and diesel is not inexpensive at the minute. Can we find ways to attract more of those boats to bring fish ashore, albeit fleets from other countries? But if we could be processing that here, let's look at that. I want to bring in the state agencies under the auspices of our department, BIM, which is very much part of it, Board BIA, who have some important views on this as well. I want to bring in other agencies that are with us, the Marine Institute, the SFPA, and then I want to bring in the Department of Rural and Community Affairs into this and see how I can work with my colleague, Minister Killeary. I think we got to look at some of the supports that we give to people who don't own any boats but are involved in the sector. What can we do from the social support side? So there's a very significant amount of state resources that we can deploy. I have to be mindful that there are state aid rules, but the Taoiseach has made it very clear to myself and Minister Hayden that we need to push back into the Commission in relation to this, that we cannot see such a dramatic cut in activity and expect to just, you know, say, we can't do this because of state aid rules. These are rural communities, they're coastal communities, you can't just drop another factory in there. You can't drop a data centre in either because we're still working on getting grid development into many of these areas. So I think, whilst I agree with a lot of what you're saying, I'm not as pessimistic I can't be. I've got to keep trying to find ways forward here for these resilient people who have come through so much and shown such capacity to transform over the decades. So I'll be working with others. I would say that Commission will meet early in January and I would hope to be able to share with you later this week the chairperson of SAIM. Just a quick one Minister. Anecdotally I'm told that a lot of our bigger trawlers are landing fish in Norway rather than in Ireland and that we've got to find a way to incentivise them to come home and if there are financial supports to be put in place maybe that's where we should be looking. I'm aware of the state aid thing but Talbot, the EU has fairly screwed us anyway. Well, thanks very much. There are issues both for domestic flagged ships moving to other countries based on more attractive conditions perhaps, etc. Maybe it's the price of fuel. There's a myriad of issues and we've got to try to understand that better and that's why through the representative bodies through the POs that represent the major fishing operators, I want to work with them. I probably neglected, I did neglect in my opening statement to give regard to the industry leaders mainly led by the Seafood Alliance, which is a group of the POs that have come together who were in Brussels, who provided me with assistance and support throughout, who understand who are representing and some of them working in the sector every day of the week. And I'm thankful for their support. I'm thankful for their positive comments, notwithstanding what I might have heard elsewhere, about how we handle this. And I want them to be very much part of developing a response to what is their industry. I don't intend to impose something. Fishing is not my competence, but my competence will be deployed to work with everybody here on the committee and them to try to find a solution. The scale of the loss in the first instance, I think we already flagged on 24, 25 prices is about 74, 75, 73, 74 million. Now, obviously, with the reduced availability of fish, particularly of mackerel, prices have shot up. So that gives inflated figures. But notwithstanding that, you know, we have a lot to do to try to make up that. And then the added value, the added benefit that would be to these communities through the supply chain. I know Senator Boyle is online today, but he knows full well, he's in regular contact with me about issues here and the impact that it has on the supply chain all the way. Thank you. Thank you, Minister.