There is one category of fish which I am bound by international agreement to admit to this country without restriction in all circumstances, and that is cured fish. The reason why I am compelled to allow in unlimited quantities of that fish from Great Britain is because I am bound, under an agreement signed by Deputy Dr. Ryan when he was Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries in 1938. Now, that is the only category of fish which I have no power to stop. The reason why I have no power to stop it is because Deputy Dr. Ryan signed an agreement with the British Government in 1938 binding himself, for the duration of that agreement, never to stop it.
Now, apart from that, there is no category of fish which can be offered at our ports that I have not the power to prohibit absolutely. I am now giving full and fair notice, at home and abroad, that if this House and the Seanad passes the Sea Fisheries Bill, 1950, I shall prohibit the landing of fish on the shores of this country by anybody other than the inshore fishermen of our own country. There is not a line, a paragraph or an implication in the trade agreement made with Iceland which, in any degree, restricts my absolute power, as Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, to prohibit the import of all fish on any day and for any time. Everybody, at home and abroad, knows now that it is the declared policy of the Government to prohibit all such imports so soon as the volume of the landings of our inshore fishermen is sufficient to meet the domestic market requirements.
It is true that I dislike animadverting on the shortcomings of my predecessors, but, when discussions of this kind are initiated by the Opposition, it becomes my duty to do so. Through the gross ineptitude of my predecessors, the situation had developed here, when I took office, that the inshore fishing industry was indelibly associated in the minds of the public of this country with inadequate supplies of fish at excessive prices. It has taken me some time to eradicate from the public mind any such concept, and to make our own people realise that the inshore fishermen of this country do not claim any right, and had no desire, to maintain a situation of quasi-famine in the fish market here: that their whole aim is simply to supply the domestic market, and that they welcome the introduction of supplies of fish from abroad to ensure an abundance for consumers in this country until such time as they, by their efforts, can themselves provide it.
I have, accordingly, provided that, in addition to the landings of our inshore fishermen, there shall be regularly brought from abroad such quantities of fish as may be required to ensure that an adequate supply of fish will be available for consumers at all times, and that any fortuitous profit earned on these imports of fish will be sequestrated, not for the enrichment of any individual importer but for the endowment of the inshore fishery organisation. I intend to continue that policy, and I intend to guarantee to the consumers of this country a full and varied supply of whatever kind of fish they want from the catches of the inshore fishermen, supplemented by imports from Denmark, Great Britain, Iceland, or from wherever else the best fish can be bought at the cheapest price.
Deputy Burke through malignancy— not, I think, the stupidity he dissembled—sought to revive the canard about the dumping of fish. He knows, just as well as I do, that what happened on that occasion was that, with an abundant supply of herrings on the Dublin market, which is the hawkers' fish, caught by men who went out at night and worked all night to catch them, a few irresponsible "goms" on the north shore in Dublin went out and practised what, in my considered opinion, is the dirty trick of bag-netting close to the shore, shoaling whiting so small that they were too lazy to go to the trouble of gutting them. They dumped that fish into lorries, drove it into the Dublin market and threw it into the Dublin market, thereby destroying the market for the herrings which hard-working fishermen had spent a long night at sea catching and despatching to the Dublin market.
Now, I want to tell the tulips who think that they can exploit their neighbours by dumping unlimited quantities of ungutted small whiting on the Dublin market that I hope every stone of it will be left over when it is offered on the market. If it is, it will be consigned to the fish-meal factory which was not there in the days of the Fianna Fáil Government, and there will be converted into fish meal, and the price paid for it will not pay for the petrol which was used to carry it to the market. If any of the Deputy's astute neighbours think that they can conjure up for themselves ignorant public sympathy they had better learn that the public are not as silly as they take them to be. The public are well able to judge of activities of that kind. The people who dumped small ungutted whiting on the Dublin market did it for the purpose of injuring their neighbours and of disorganising the market where hard-working men sought to earn an honest living. I give them notice now that they never will be allowed to succeed in that kind of activity, and that every time they try it it will cost them money. They need not worry that it will be dumped in the sea or that there will be any publicity about it. It will be discreetly removed to the fish-meal factory to be converted into fish meal, and all that they will get will be a debit note to meet the cost of carting it from the market to which it ought never have been brought by the rogues who trade in it.
