I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £133,160 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1951, for Salaries and Expenses in connection with Sea and Inland Fisheries, including a Grantin-Aid.
In connection with this Vote, it is well that the House should know at once that a situation of considerable gravity has arisen in the world market for fish. Deputies will probably have observed that the price of fish was recently decontrolled in Great Britain. There was a short period during which prices dramatically appreciated and that was followed by a catastrophic collapse which has resulted already in a very substantial part of the entire British trawler fleet being laid up. The British Government is at this time considering relief measures whereunder the Treasury will be expected to come to the assistance of the industry. That situation has been further complicated by developments in Iceland. Prior to the war, Iceland disposed of the greater part of its catch on the Continent of Europe. That market was completely dislocated by the world war but soon after peace was declared, Iceland established a satisfactory trade, from her point of view, with Soviet Russia. Iceland then adhered to the Atlantic Pact and the Cominform, acting in accordance with its usual realistic approach to such matters, promptly cancelled its contract for fish whereupon it transpired that the whole economy of Iceland was imperilled. I understand that the matter is now engaging the attention of the United States Government to devise remedial steps. From the impact of these developments outside, this country has been insulated by the declared policy of the Government.
It is necessary to appreciate clearly and fully what that declared policy is. It is the fixed policy of this Government, communicated by me to this House in the summer of 1948, to reserve the domestic fish market for the exclusive enjoyment of the inshore fishermen along our coasts.
Now I am deliberately asking fish consumers in this country to pay an uneconomic price for fish as compared with the price at which they could buy fish had they access freely to the world market, and the consideration for that concession on the part of the consumer is that thereby is created employment for 8,000 part-time workers in the inshore fishing industry and 2,000 permanent workers, who, if they were denied that employment to-morrow, would overnight be converted from a body of independent, hard-working individuals into a very formidable social problem which our community would have to find a means of resolving. I emphasise that very deliberately for this reason, that I made that clear in this House in 1948 and I stated quite emphatically then that it was right that all should know that the Government would not allow the interests of the inshore fishermen to be prejudiced by any vested interest, foreign or domestic.
I have since been engaged on the drafting of the necessary legislation to give effect to those purposes and the only excuse I can offer the House for my failure to submit that legislation sooner is that legislation in connection with the consolidation of the fishery laws for inland fisheries was in hands and was a gigantic task. However, that Bill to reconstitute the Sea Fisheries Association will be introduced before the end of this session and, if Oireachtas Éireann approves of it, the only persons who will be allowed by law to land fish in Ireland for sale to the consuming public will be the Sea Fisheries Association acting as a statutory co-operative of and for the inshore fishermen.
Now the protection of the Irish market has, of course, created a position in which fish caught by fishing units with the maximum efficiency is offered at a profit. I do not want to be taken now as criticising the entrepreneurs who availed of that. All that I am doing is telling Dáil Éireann that I regard those perfectly law-abiding and enterprising men as fixed with full and ample notice that it is no charge on our Exchequer to buy them out, they having come in since 1948. If they want to dispose of their boats and their gear, they can sell them to the Sea Fisheries Association or they can sell them to trawler companies elsewhere, but they can have no claim, in justice or in equity, to demand of the Government that, in clearing the field for the inshore fishermen, they will be fully compensated by independent arbitration for such interests as they conceive they have as the result of setting up since the policy was declared in July, 1948.
There have been enterprising individuals here who bought 60, 70 and 80-foot boats, hired Scotch crews and fished to good purpose, and I am bound to say that the example presented by their crews and their ships is one which I have no hesitation in commending earnestly to our own fishermen. The boats were admirable, the crews beyond praise, and the efficiency shown in prosection of the industry an example for any fisherman in the world. I am happy to say that most of those who entered the trade since 1948, with the boats they provided and the facilities and the equipment thereon for the convenience of the fishermen, showed a standard of excellence to which the Sea Fisheries Association aspires and towards which I am happy to think it is rapidly approaching.
I want to say this quite deliberately. I suppose everybody has his own King Charles's head in this world. I know that I shall bring down on my head a tornado of fury by declaring the truth in respect of certain matters. Muintir na Mara is a body which represents itself as speaking for the fishermen, which it does not. It may speak for some, but certainly not for them all. I must assume that its spokesmen act in good faith. But, where they get their information or how they come to the conclusions to which they do come is a complete mystery to me, because of all that is published by word of mouth and in writing by Muintir na Mara and those who speak for it more than 70 per cent. has no more relation to the truth than it has to an Icelandic saga. It is a very difficult thing to know where to begin in correcting the misapprehensions that exist in regard to the circumstances with which we have to contend with in Ireland if the whole of a case is contorted and distorted, in good faith or in bad faith. Driven by that emergency, I have had recourse, not this time to a White Paper, but to a map. Well-intentioned critics point to Norway and they will say: "Why can the Norwegians fish so prosperously while our fishermen always seem to be pulling the devil by the tail?" That is one problem we have. Here is another problem. Must not the shores of Ireland be teeming with fish if trawlers come from Spain, France, Great Britain and from the ends of the earth to shoot their trawls? That is another fatal illusion. Why do we not sell herrings and mackerel? Look at the exports. What has become of the trade? The assumption is that the mackerel take a summer holiday on the coast everywhere as regularly as the clock and that you can go down and scoop them out on the appointed day. That is another point.
Let me deal with these three. I propose to make available for Deputies a map of the North Atlantic, indicating upon it the incidence of cod and demersal fish of all varieties. Let us not pretend to deal in mystification. Demersal fish are sole, whiting, plaice, turbot and the like; pelagic fish means herring and mackerel and, with shell-fish, these are the broad divisions. When Deputies see the marine map of the North Atlantic, they will see that the whole coast of Norway, from the extreme north to the southernmost tip, constitutes the edge of a submarine plateau which is the most densely populated fishing bed in the Atlantic Ocean. There is adjacent to the Lofoten Islands one of the richest cod fisheries in the Atlantic, and I think it all lies within the territorial jurisdiction of the Kingdom of Norway. Around the coast of Ireland there are not now, and there never have been, fishing beds comparable, in the same category at all, with the Norwegian fishing beds, and the nearest point to Ireland at which such banks occur are the fishing banks 150 miles south of the County Kerry. There is a certain amount of fish around the shore of almost any island with a shelving shore, but it is in very much more fundamental geographic structures submarine that you get fishing beds such as occur in the Lofoten Islands and in Norway and which you may really describe as liquid gold mines because the Norwegians, without going outside their territorial waters, have access to every variety of pelagic fish that swims in a temperate sea in addition to vast quantities of cod.
The presence of these banks some 150 miles south of Ireland is the cause of the illusion that our shores teem with fish because trawlers deem it worth while to come from afar to fish. No trawler ever comes from afar to fish, but they do come to the banks 150 miles south of this country. When they are trawling there and receive a wireless message that there is a gale in mid-Atlantic moving eastwards, they shoot as fast as they can for the safety of our shore, and there is not a doubt that some of them do shoot a trawl within our territorial waters, which they ought not to do. When we catch them at it we arrest them and confiscate their gear, but of the trawlers that lie off our coasts and are the subject of scandal to our friends in Galway, Donegal and Kerry, seven in ten are taking shelter and have no more intention of fishing than I have.
As against that, you will get French trawlers coming for crayfish. In the last Fisheries (Amendment) Act, I asked Oireachtas Éireann to place a mandatory injunction on district justices that if a man was convicted of fishing within the three-mile limit they had to confiscate his gear. Very shortly afterwards I nailed a gentleman in Kerry and he was convicted and his gear was confiscated. The parish priest, the curate, the doctor and every individual in that parish sent a round robin addressed to me stating that this was a persecuted Breton who had been trampled underfoot by the communards and that having struggled through for his Faith, this persecuted man had scraped together the price of his gear, and that if I took it from him he would sink into the dereliction he had so heroically resisted under the persecuting harrow of the Cominform. I am afraid I heartlessly replied that he should have thought of all that before he broke out; let him go back whence he came and scrape up enough to buy another gear. I am afraid that they took it badly. My Catholicity was in doubt. I was impudent, hardhearted and unsympathetic.
The following Tuesday fortnight, I nailed the gentleman off Downings in Donegal. He had another equipment and he was as busy as a bee. I took the gear again and I have not a doubt that he will turn up wherever he can poke his nose in.
What I want to emphasise to the House is that the Minister for Fisheries, whoever he may be, myself, my predecessor or his predecessor, is sternly rebuked, for not taking more effective measures to protect our fishermen from marauding trawlers, but when you do nail them, the whole parish turns up to petition you to let them go again. That gentleman had crayfish in his hold worth over £500 and I was the worst in the world when I said: "If you have to bury it, do not let him take one claw back to Brittany." The poor, down-trodden Christian comes back fresh as a bee a fortnight later. It is as well to make it perfectly clear that any foreign trawler found trawling in our territorial waters will be arrested, and if we can prosecute him to a conviction, his catch will be confiscated and his gear will be confiscated. We will send him back whence he came with the very minimum equipment which will get him back over the waves of the sea whether he is Catholic, Presbyterian, Communist or reactionary. So much, then, for the belief that foreign trawlers are allowed to cruise at their leisure through our territorial waters. They are not, but we are not going to break every canon of decent behaviour by driving trawlers out of our inlets into the open sea when the weather is of a kind to jeopardise their safety. I beg of Deputies and influential persons to lend a hand and help us to get people to discriminate between the trawler which seeks and receives legitimate shelter and the trawler which is here on illegal business. We can all put our shoulder to the wheel to help to nail him but it would be a disgrace to us to acquire the reputation internationally that refuge might not be sought here without running the risk of insult.
A good many Deputies on both sides yearn for the establishment of deep sea trawling. I never yearned for it, but I understand what is in their minds. They have this kind of feeling that, if we had some deep sea trawlers which would bring in a bulk of fish, it would mean a constant steadfast supply and we could integrate that with the inshore fish and the whole thing would go ahead like a bell. That is a complete illusion. Few Deputies as far as I can see, know that we do not eat in this country the kind of fish which the British get from trawlers. Very little trawler fish ever reaches the consumers' table in Great Britain within three weeks of being caught. A deep sea trawler is half full when it gets to the end of its trip and that fish goes on the shelves in ice. Its subsequent catch goes into the hold in bulk in ice, but, when it comes back to port, part of its catch is nearly six weeks old and the best of it is a fortnight old. If that fish were generally offered on the market here, it would get a very poor reception, because the fish that comes on to the Dublin market and the Cork market is fish caught to-day and sold to-morrow or the day after, because the fellows do not go great distances from shore and would rarely be more than a night out.
If a fleet of trawlers were based on this country not more than 40 per cent. of its catch would be available for the prime fish trade, and, if you did not get a market for another 40 per cent. in the fish and chip shops, you simply could not operate trawlers at all. We know that to our cost for we did operate them and lost £50,000 on them about 1935. The fish trawling business is based on the fish and chip business in Great Britain and it is the fact that they can sell the "quare" looking fish, at which the ordinary domestic consumer would take fright if he saw them, to the fish and chip shops who fillet and fry it—it is perfectly good fish but not the kind of fish that is normally known to the ordinary housewife—and get the market price in normal times for the prime fish in Billingsgate, disposing of the trimmings and the rubbish for 2/- or 3/- a stone to the fish meal makers, is what makes the trawler industry pay.
But note what that means. If you are going to operate a fleet of deep sea trawlers with that kind of capacity from our shores, far from integrating the inshore fishermen with it, you simply wipe out the inshore fisherman because his services will not be required, because the only people who would work the trawlers is the Sea Fisheries Association and the reason it can only be the Sea Fisheries Association is that if we are to keep the inshore fishermen going, we have to maintain a price for fish that nobody could defend in Parliament, if it was being maintained for the benefit of a commercial enterprise. Unless there is an adequate quid pro quo for asking the consumers to pay that price, no sane legislator could make the request upon them.
I want to go on record as correcting some of the wild allegations made from time to time by Muintir na Mara. I wonder have Deputies any preconceived idea as to what the condition of the fishing industry from the inshore fisherman's point of view is to-day and what the numbers are compared with the past. I think the impression is spread abroad that the inshore fisherman is in a state closely approximating to dereliction, that the industry threatens to disappear and is steadily declining.
The fact is that the inshore fisherman landed more demersal fish this year in Ireland than he has ever done before; the fact is that there are, I think, more inshore fishermen fishing at present than have fished for very many years; the fact is that they are able to pay for their boats and gear more promptly now than they have ever been able to pay for them in the past; the fact is that the new sea fisheries legislation, the deep freeze equipment at Killybegs and the boat building going on at Meevagh, Killybegs, Dingle—and I hope that shortly there will be boat building at Baltimore—mean that there will be more activity in the sea fisheries industry in this country than there has been in the past quarter of a century.
Would anyone reading the observations of Muintir na Mara believe that that approximated to the truth? I want to make this clear, that, when you study the record, you find that that is not a development of last year or the year before. It is part of a trend which began about 1935 and which has shown a steady upward course, and I think it is largely due to the unselfish and disinterested exertions of the officers of my Department and of the Sea Fisheries Association who are more devoted to the promotion of the work committed to their care than probably any other body of public servants in this country.
Why people should imagine that the Minister for Fisheries or the officers charged with responsibility for that industry should be engaged in a dark conspiracy to destroy the fisheries is a mystery to me. The presumption is that, if you are Minister for Fisheries, you want to produce the best results you can, if not for the sake of the fishermen, for your own sake. Why Muintir na Mara should imagine that there is this kind of dark and hideous conspiracy to impoverish the fishermen, to destroy the whole organisation and to deliver them over into the hands of every exploiting villain in the world is a mystery to me. Of course, when the question is put to the test at the annual meetings of the Sea Fisheries Association, the fellows who come in to bawl and roar, to make speeches and to hand in written statements, when a poll is taken, are beaten ten to one. While they command only one vote in ten of the ordinary fishermen—for it is the fishermen who constitute the voting numbers of the association— they make as much noise, each one of them, as 100 legitimate fishermen.
For instance, there was great hullabaloo about the fall in the catch of pelagic fish last year. It was remarkable but what can you do about it? You cannot go out and chase the mackerel in, and, to the best of our knowledge and belief, the steady southeasterly wind that blew off Dingle during last year blew the plankton out to sea and the mackerel did not show. If there is anybody here or elsewhere who will develop some kind of whistle or bugle that will persuade the mackerel to turn round and come in, we shall be very glad to station him down at Dingle to whistle them in when the plankton are travelling in the opposite direction; but universal knowledge to date suggests that if the plankton does not come ashore the mackerel will not come ashore.
I do not think the shoaling of herring is a subject fully understood. Last year herring fishing began off the Wexford coast. It looked as if it was going to be a smasher. It suddenly teamed away in three weeks and it never developed on any other shore at all to its usual extent. The boats were ready, the men were ready, the market was ready. Here again, within certain limits you can pursue herrings but no limits would make a substantial difference. If herring do not shoal, they do not shoal. When you are dealing with demersal fish, you can, with the assistance of echo sounders and modern apparatus of that kind, with which we are equipping the boats, very often follow them out of certain well-known fishing beds into rocky bottoms where heretofore fishermen had not ventured to let down their nets, and actually locate the fish swimming in the sea and see them on radar screens and drop your net down and practically scoop them up. When you are dealing with shoaling herring or mackerel that is not the case unless you are using steam trawlers in the relatively deep waters of the North Sea but, for inshore fishermen, equipped with a 50 foot boat, capable of going up to 20 miles, the hope of chasing shoaling fish is not one worthy of serious pursuit.
There is this consoling feature about it, that as the landings declined in quantity, their value in money rose and, although the volume of the pelagic fish landed dropped from 149,500 cwt.—the volume actually landed dropped to that because the landings declined from 385,000 to 234,000—the value declined by a very much smaller sum which was to the advantage of the fishermen. The demersal landings, that is, prime fish, decreased by 1,000 cwts. but, when you come to examine that, you discover that the landings by inshore fishermen increased by 4,000 cwts. It was the trawler company that was down by 5,000 cwts. So, it was the despised inshore fishermen who increased their catch. I need hardly say that that fact was not made very clear by the apostles of Muintir na Mara.
I could continue to pursue that business almost indefinitely because I deprecate most strongly the reckless, irresponsible and utterly illusory language of Muintir na Mara which, in my opinion, does nothing to help the fishermen by such conduct and only foments misunderstandings and ill will, where neither should exist. The only purpose for existing that the Sea Fisheries Association has is to serve the interests of the fishermen themselves. It is true that the fishermen on the east coast do not stand so urgently in need of the Sea Fisheries Association as do the fishermen of the west coast, who have not the ready access to markets that the north shore and east shore fishermen have, but, so long as the fishermen of the west, north-west and south-west require the services of the Sea Fisheries Association they shall have it and Muintir na Mara had better make up its mind finally to this. Any legitimate ground for complaint, we are eager in the Department of Fisheries to know of it at the earliest possible moment, but yelling and whooping and acting irresponsibly contains no hope that those who so yell, whoop and act will be invited to silence by offering them membership of the Sea Fisheries Association or any other body associated with the administration of the fishermen's affairs.
There was a passionate protest about the increases in our imports of fish which, when tracked down, referred to canned salmon. What relation imports of canned salmon have to the market demand for herrings, mackerel and haddock is a mystery to me.
I would like the House to know that, taking the years from 1944 to 1949, going back to 1936, 1937 and 1938 and taking an average, the number of inshore fishermen exclusively employed in fishing was about 1,584. It is to-day 1,913. The number of men partially employed was 5,866 in 1936, 1937 and 1938. It is to-day 8,150. The number of motor boats solely engaged in fishing in 1936, 1937 and 1938 was 344. It is to-day 578. The number of unengined boats solely engaged was 1,357 and it is now 2,260. The number of boats partially engaged was 884 and it is now 446. I would wish to see the number of unengined boats steadily declining to the point of disappearance as we are able to furnish fishermen with properly engined boats which afford them very much better opportunity of getting a decent livelihood from the sea.
Does it not strike the House as queer, when you have been listening to all the caterwauling that has been going on, to discover that far from the inshore fishing industry disappearing it is 20 per cent. more numerous in its numbers and 50 per cent. stronger in its boats and equipment than it was 15 years ago? Certainly, if I believed all I read in the newspapers the impression I would get is the direct opposite of what is in fact the situation and if the Bill which I propose to lay before the House passes, I know the view is held that the inshore fishermen will never work seriously enough fully to supply the domestic market. I do not accept that view and this is certain— we are now going to give them the opportunity. We will give them the opportunity, the boats and the equipment to do so and if they do not succeed—I believe they will—we will be sure of this, that their failure will not be for the want of any facility with which they might have succeeded had they not been denied it. I would like the House to know that and if they think I am wrong in that to say so now. There will be those who think that it is extravagant and foolish to buy the best at our present stage. My purpose is to equip our inshore fishermen with the best and most modern boats and equipment that money can buy and to take one serious last whirl at putting them permanently and prosperously on a firm foundation, so that if we fail we will not have it to say that perhaps we spoiled the ship for a ha'porth of tar, that if we had given them this little extra thing it might have done the trick. Nothing that will help to make them efficient and to get them a decent living out of it will be withheld. If they are prepared to work, they need not apprehend that any difficulty that we can overcome will be allowed to harass them.
So much, then, for the sea fisheries, except perhaps that I should tell the House this. Last year, I spoke optimistically of finding boats for our men this year. I am glad to be able to give a reasonably satisfactory report. We were able to provide and issue six new 50-foot boats, one new 35-foot and two boats under 35-foot; six unengined craft and eight new engined; we have seven 50-foot boats abuilding, two 38-foot and one 35-foot. We hope before the end of this financial year to issue 12 50-foot boats to purchasers and four 38-foot. The 50-foot boats cost about £4,800; the 38-foot, £3,000 to £3,500 and the others from £500 to £1,500. In addition to that, the men have to get gear. We do not use the Asdic equipment, as I am informed that the Hughes type echo sounding equipment is the most suitable for our men's conditions and accordingly that is the apparatus being provided on the boats.
There was a great hullabaloo about the decline in the quantity of fish handled by the association in the last year. It did decline, from 82,000 cwts. to 78,000 cwts. But when you come to investigate what the decline was, you discover it was mussels. Muintir na Mara never bothered to mention that. Sometimes when talking of "fish" they mean herrings and another time they mean everything that comes out of the sea. The decline in the total quantity of fish landed was due to a decline in the quantity of mussels and that had its origin in a row going on in Cromane, about which Deputy John Flynn and myself know a good deal. The fellows who pick the mussels at Cromane thought Cromane was not acting squarely and some of them got at loggerheads. That has been squared up, and now that the fellows trust one another again, we will get on. The wet fish was the highest on record. The Sea Fisheries Association handled 70,530 cwts. of wet fish last year, compared with 68,981 cwts. in 1948. That, so far as I know, is the largest quantity of wet fish ever handled since the association was established. However, at the annual general meeting of the Sea Fisheries Association, although the landings were the highest we have ever handled on behalf of the inshore fishermen since it was founded, if we read the headlines and the report of the proceedings of the Sea Fisheries Association meeting on the point, we could not but look upon the reduction as being the result of inefficiency, dishonesty and general roguery of the officers charged to carry it on.
Would Deputies believe that there were chronic crises in this country in the landings of fish? I arranged to institute careful inquiries as to how many times there was a shortage in any settled consumption of fish in any 12 months and let me have a memorandum on each separate occasion as to why there was a shortage of fish, what shortage was there, how long it lasted and whether it is likely to recur. Of course then you begin to get prudent. There is rarely, if ever a shortage of fish but there can be a particular kind of fish that a particular person wants to buy. You may not be able to get black Dover sole but you can get a herring and the day you cannot get a herring you may be able to get plaice or halibut or some other thing. There is notably in Cork City on Monday not infrequently a shortage of fish and there always will be, for the simple reason that our people do not like stale fish and the fellows do not go out fishing on Sunday; and it is extremely difficult to say there will be a supply of fish on Monday morning early unless the fishmongers have had too much fish on Saturday and carry some over on ice until Monday and there is nothing I or anyone else can do about it except to ensure that there will always be a deposit of stale fish from Grimsby on Friday night so that some energetic lady—all honour to her— making off to the fishmonger on Monday morning before the man has his apron on and who wants a pound of filleted sole, if he has some from Friday night he can supply it but he will not be able to supply it from fishermen's boats. Does the Dáil think that a grave reflection on the inshore fishermen? If they do, we will buy some stale fish and store it in Cork every Saturday night, but I think it would be a gross mistake and unless the Dáil expresses a grave wish I am not going to do it. It does happen that you will get a fog round our coast—now, that is very rare—and there is no fish; but we can always get fish from Grimsby if necessity arises. There may be a day's scarcity, but you cannot tell when fog is going to roll in.
We do not pretend that the inshore fishermen have the resources of the Grimsby fleet and we do not pretend that we are in a position to maintain the same kind of supply as the trawling industry in England. And we do not contend that we can do anything further to maintain the reputation in asking a monopoly from Dáil Éireann that that position will continue. We say we will endeavour to supply the entire demand with our own boats and give an undertaking that whenever a lacuna arises we will get fish and fill it from Grimsby or elsewhere. We have to get it. We do not want to do that but we acknowledge freely that our primary duty is to supply the demand. We would like to supply it with fresh fish landed by ourselves but we acknowledge the duty to supply it wherever it may be drawn. There were some shortages in the Spring of 1949. The weeks chiefly affected were the 3rd and 4th weeks of February, the 3rd week of March and the 3rd and 4th weeks of April. Do any one of you remember what the weather was like in that year, then? In April, 1949, I had occasion to travel on an aeroplane. When I went to Collinstown I nearly came home again—it nearly took the roof off the place. There was a period during that time when the men did not go out—and they were perfectly right. I would very much sooner have some of the dowagers in Cork inconvenienced in regard to the bit of fish they wanted with their tea than get the crew washed up drowned. But we cannot provide against that, and if the House thinks they cannot get on without that kind of thing there is no use looking to the inshore fishermen for it. They are not equipped to meet every hazard of the weather and we do not intend so to equip them. If, on account of bad weather, there is a simultaneous shortage in Great Britain, we may have to do without fish for a couple of days—but it very rarely happens.
Here is what is going to shock you and I want you to listen to it, because I want you to understand how inconceivable it is that these prices could for a moment be defended if they were designed to preserve the prosperity of commercial enterprises. The present price of cod in Aberdeen is from 6/- to 7/- a stone; the present price of cod per stone in Dublin is 16/4. Codling is 4/6 a stone in Aberdeen; in Dublin it is 9/- a stone. Whiting is 3/3 a stone in Aberdeen; in Dublin it is from 7/- to 9/4 a stone. Haddock, 10/- a stone in Aberdeen; in Dublin it is 16/4 a stone. Plaice is from 12/- to 14/- a stone in Aberdeen; it is from 17/6 to 23/4 a stone in Dublin. Did you ever think that was the case when you read the observations of Muintir na Mara in which the depressed Irish fishermen were asked to accept prices lower than anyone would dare to offer to fishermen in England? Our prices are from 50 per cent. to 100 per cent. higher than the prices obtaining in Great Britain, and I will justify that so long as we protect the inshore fishermen and so long as we aim at steadily narrowing the gap by improved efficiency and improved methods between the world's price and the price we must charge for fish in order to preserve for the inshore fishermen a reasonably modest standard of living.
To be quite frank, I am too tired to go deeply into the whole question as regards inland fisheries. Substantially what I propose to do is this. We have increased the number of ova available from hatcheries. I am going to set up what is called a public trustee and ask any groups of farmers or persons who between them own stretches of riparian rights if the local fishery association can organise them and, as a group, they can transfer the riparian rights to fish to the public trustee, in consideration of which each transferor will have the right to fish from his own bank. These are the fisheries which are not protected largely at present and which are good trout fisheries, and so forth. We propose to carry out improvements where, for instance, the river is getting dirty. The public trustee will take these rivers into keeping and preserve them for our own people, whereupon the doctor, the postman, the noble earl and the shop assistant, by paying an annual sum, the same as for a gun licence, will be entitled to fish on those preserved waters. Any tourist taking out a game licence can fish in these waters.
We can clean the bed of the rivers if it should be necessary to do so: we can put up fences where they are required: we can look after ditches and dykes so that men's drains will not be damaged by people standing on one side of them and shoving the earth down into them: we can cut bushes, protect spawning beds, increase the stocks of the rivers by the transfer of ova from other rivers and carry out any other maintenance work calculated to improve the rivers as an amenity for our own people and for such tourists as may care to avail of them.
I am sure there are a number of other aspects of the Fisheries Department on which I have not touched. I can assure Deputies that I am willing and anxious to give any additional information they may require before the Vote is passed.
