I beg to move the Second Reading of the Oil in Navigable Waters Bill, 1925. I said in moving for leave to introduce the Bill that the question of the prevention of oil pollution had engaged the attention of the Legislatures of many States and this Bill follows, in the main, on the lines of Acts recently passed in the United States and Great Britain. The essence of the Bill is in Section 3, the penalising section, which makes it an offence punishable by a fine, not exceeding £30, to discharge or allow to escape, whether directly or indirectly, any oil into any waters to which this Act applies from any vessel, premises or place on land, or from any apparatus used for the purpose of transferring oil from or to any vessel to or from any other vessel. You have then definitions of what a vessel means. Section 7 closes one gap which had been found to be left in an earlier Act in another Parliament. Section 5 is a necessary precaution, also prohibiting the transfer of oil by night, unless notice has been given, so that the transfer may be properly supervised. Certain power of supervision and inspection is given to this Department by Section 8, and the method of prosecution is set out in a later section, it being by summary proceedings.
Legislation on this matter has been rendered urgent by the increase in the number of vessels carrying oil and using oil as fuel. It has been found that oil discharged, either accidentally or deliberately may have very bad effects. The calculation has been made, with rather a surprising result, that less than six quarts of oil would spread as a film over about a square mile of the ocean, and the evil effects of it are varied. Of course it has a tremendous evil effect upon certain types of fish. Sea-birds which get caught in the fluid cannot rise and are destroyed. It has been found by the Dublin Port and Docks Board that in certain concrete constructions, which were in process of being set up, the cement was prevented from bonding by a certain amount of oil washed in from a vessel which simply had rinsed out a container in which it ordinarily carried oil and discharged that very much diluted fluid into the sea.
There is no existing legislation to meet the evil. I think the only possible penalty that could be imposed would be by a straining of the Harbour, Docks, Piers and Quays Act of 1847, which imposes a very small fine for the throwing of rubbish into the sea. It has been found that that particular type of fine is not sufficient to meet the evils involved by the discharge of oil in this way, and the Bill sets out to meet the difficulty.
