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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 23 Jul 1952

Vol. 133 No. 11

Committee on Finance. - Vote 28—Fisheries.

I move:—

That a sum not exceeding £66,530 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1953, for Salaries and Expenses in connection with Sea and Inland Fisheries, including sundry Grants-in-Aid.

Tá an Meastachán ataithe ag dhá rud faoi leith a mbeifear glan uathu feasta, .i. cúiteamh d'íoc le daoine a chaill slí bheatha de bharr toirmeasc ar líontóireacht bhreac is bhradán i bhfíoruisce, agus iascaireacht an Fheabhail a cheannach. Tógann an dá rud sin os cionn céad míle púnt eatarthu.

Bhéarfar faoi deara an méad airgid atá luaite sa Meastachán i gcóir airleacan le báid agus gléasra a sholáthar. Is amhlaidh atá an chóir airgeadais le haghaidh na seirbhíse seo athraithe ag an mBille Iascaigh Mhara, 1952. Pé brí méad airgid a bheas ag teastáil feasta mar airleacain tá cead ag an Aire Áirgedais é d'íoc as an bPríomh-Chiste arna mholadh sin dó ag an Aire Talmhaíochta. Sin í ciall na difríochta atá idir an dá shuim airgid atá luaite ar aghaidh G (2). Sé an fáth go bhfuil suim ar bith ar aghaidh G (2) agus G (3) i gcóir na bliana 1952-53 gurb amhlaidh a bhí ceangal ar an gComhlachas Iascaigh, sular lánscoireadh é, na suimeanna sin a chaitheamh faoin dá fhó-cheann chéanna.

Ó stop an cogadh bhí soláthar éisc ag dul i laghad ag báid na hÉireann go mall díreach. Ar an ábhar sin, is maith liom a bheith i ndon a thuairisciú go bhfuil feabhas ar an scéal. Sa gcéad sé mhí den bhliain seo bhí méadú do réir trí agus fiche faoin gcéad sa méad éisc a maraíodh le hais na tréimhse céanna anuraidh. Thug sé sin méadú do réir trí déag faoin gcéad san airgead. Tharla an chuid is mó den fheabhas sin i mí an Mheithimh seo chaite. B'fhéidir gur siocar báid níos fearr a bheith anois ann atá an deascéal seo againn; ach dá fheabhas iad ní féidir leo a dhul amach ar an domhain, agus dá bhrí sin braitheann an scéal cuid mhaith ar an aimsir, a thug an t-iasc sáthach comhgharach don tír agus a d'fhág ar chumas na mbád a dhul á thóraíocht.

I dtaobh an iascaigh intíre is féidir a rá go bhfuil airgead maith á dhéanamh ag lucht na n-eangach sna hinbhir; go bhfuil obair mhaith dá déanamh ag an Iontaobhas Iascaigh Intíre Incorportha ar mhaithe le lucht na mbreac; agus go bhfuil cúrsaí iascaigh An Fheabhail ag dul ar aghaidh go réidh socair sásúil faoi réim an Choimisiúin nua a cuireadh ar bun tamall ó shoin. Teastaíonn tuille airgid leis an gcóir chosanta ar na haibhneacha a dhaingiú, agus táthar ag tabhairt aire don scéal sin.

In introducing the Fisheries Estimate for 1952/53, it is necessary to explain the changes that have been made in the Estimate since it was published in the official volume of Estimates for the Public Services for the financial year ending 31st March, 1953. In that volume the net total of the Fisheries Estimate was given as £328,130. The net total of the revised Estimate as circulated recently to Deputies is £211,530, a decrease of £116,600. This decrease is not a reduction in the estimated expenditure on the fisheries services for the current financial year as may appear, but is due to the fact that a sum of £55,000 has been withdrawn from sub-head G (2) and a sum of £61,600 from sub-head G (3).

These sums, which represent the advances to be made to An Bord Iascaigh Mhara for the provision of boats and gear to fishermen on hire purchase and for various works of general development respectively, will be provided from the Central Fund as they are really advances for capital investment.

It will be recollected that it was specially provided at Section 18 of the Sea Fisheries Act, 1952, that the Minister may advance from time to time to the board such sums as the board may from time to time request. It will be noted that in the revised Estimate the sum of £15,000 appears under G (2) and the sum of £23,750 under sub-head G (3). These sums were advanced to the Sea Fisheries Association before the new board came into office and for that reason they still appear in the Estimate.

While the Sea Fisheries Bill, 1952, was before the House, I gave a rather comprehensive account of recent developments leading to the present position of the sea-fishing industry and I do not think that it is necessary to go over that ground again, except to repeat that it is now clear that if we are to arrest the decline which has been evident in the industry for some years past and to bring about an increase in landings and employment we must employ more efficient methods of production than heretofore. Landings from inshore waters, i.e., the waters which lie within ten miles or so off our coasts, have been declining and there is no reason to expect that the stocks of fish in these waters will improve as long as intensive fishing is carried on on the present scale by large fishing boats in the waters which lie off our coasts but which are open to the fishermen of all countries. The main line of development must, in the circumstances, be the provision of fishing boats of increased catching power and wider range of activity for our fishermen.

During the past year or two the majority of the boats issued to our fishermen on hire-purchase through the agency of the Sea Fisheries Association, which has now been replaced by An Bord Iascaigh Mhara, have been of the 50 ft. class. These boats when adequately powered can engage in all types of fishing and can go to sea with safety except in extreme weather conditions. It is not intended to limit the size of fishing boats to 50 ft. and boats of larger dimensions will be issued as time goes on. The best efforts of our inshore fishermen even when furnished with boats of the 50 ft. class, cannot be expected to maintain an adequate and regular supply of fish in suitable variety from one end of the year to the other, as it is inevitable that their activities will be curbed occasionally by weather conditions, and seasonal fluctuations in fish stocks will reduce their landings. There is room, in the circumstances, for some considerable time for boats which can visit distant fishing grounds involving an absence from home of some weeks if we are to strive to reach as early as possible the position when imports of fish will become unnecessary.

An Bord Iascaigh Mhara came into office on 24th April, 1952, and they have already made arrangements to acquire three modern fishing vessels of 100 ft. overall. These vessels will be operated by the board itself and will be sent to fishing grounds in distant waters. It is hoped that these boats will be able to stabilise supplies to some extent throughout the year and the experience gained with them will decide whether the employment of such boats by the board should be continued and expanded, perhaps, as a permanent feature of the fishing industry. I may assure Deputies that in operating these vessels every precaution will be taken to ensure that their activities will not worsen conditions for the communities of inshore fishermen scattered around our coasts and the preservation and welfare of which is a fundamental matter of policy with the Government.

As regards the general condition of the sea-fishing industry, in 1951 the total weight of landings of all sea-fish (excluding shell-fish) was 187,600 cwt. compared with 214,200 cwt. in 1950. The landings of demersal fish, i.e., fish which is usually found on or near the sea bed, showed a reduction of only 600 cwt., and in this connection it is pleasant to note that the landings of such fish by inshore boats, increased by about 5,800 cwt.; the net reduction of 600 cwt. was brought about by the decrease of 6,400 cwt. in the landings made by steam trawlers. The reducttion in landings in 1951 compared with 1950 is accounted for, therefore, almost entirely by the drop in the landings of pelagic fish (herrings, mackerel and sprats) from 94,600 cwt. to 68,600 cwt. There was a serious fall in the landings of herring which in 1951 came to 49,800 cwt. compared with 67,800 cwt. in 1950. Mackerel showed a drop of 2,800 cwt. from the 1950 landings of 19,800 cwt. while sprats fell away from 6,900 cwt. in 1950 to 1,800 cwt. in 1951.

As Deputies know, herring and mackerel are very fickle fish and there is nothing like regularity either in their visits to our coasts or the density of the shoals whenever they put in an appearance. In 1951, herring seasons at almost all the points on the coast where herring fishing is pursued were disappointing in both the summer and winter seasons. The herring made its appearance at most places but its stay within reach of the inshore fishing boats was of short duration and the shoals were not heavy. Mackerel fishing, the main centre of which has traditionally been along the Kerry coast and some points on the Cork coast, was a failure in 1951. The fish were observed to be in the outer waters but they did not come close inshore in any density.

As regards shell-fish, there was some improvement in 1951 compared with 1950 as the value of the landings increased from £87,100 to £93,600. It is not possible to give shell-fish landings by weight as some of the varieties are reckoned by number. The variety that showed the biggest increase in landings was crayfish.

As regards the catching power of the fishing fleets, the number of motor fishing boats still continues to increase steadily from year to year. In 1951, 653 motor boats were engaged compared with 622 in 1950. These figures show a very considerable improvement compared with pre-war years when the average number of motor boats in commission was only 390. The number of unengined boats in the fishing industry shows very little fluctuation from year to year; it remains pretty constant at about 2,700. The strength and efficiency of the fishing fleet is being constantly improved by the issue of additional craft through the medium of the hire-purchase scheme operated heretofore by the Sea Fisheries Association, and now by An Bord Iascaigh Mhara. As an indication of the efforts being made to meet the needs of our fishermen in the matter of more efficient fishing boats in the shortest possible time, I may mention that An Bord Iascaigh Mhara has now four building and repair yards in operation. As well as building as many boats as possible in these yards in addition, of course, to any repair work that may be necessary, orders are placed with boat-building firms in this country and occasionally outside it.

During the period from the 1st April, 1951 to the 31st March, 1952, 14 fishing boats of 50 ft. and over and three boats of lesser dimensions were issued to fishermen on hire-purchase terms; new engines were installed in four other cases. At present nine fishing boats are under construction and it is expected that between this and the end of March next 13 boats will be ready for issue. With the issue of so many first-class fishing craft, fitted with all the latest equipment to enable them to make the best possible use of their time there is every reason to expect that the landings of fish as to quantity, regularity and variety by our inshore fishermen will continue to improve. Most of these men are highly skilled and it is only due to them that they should be furnished with boats which will enable them to employ their efforts to the best advantage and also that they should have as much comfort as possible while they have to live on board when fishing on grounds which are far removed from their home ports.

Before leaving the question of landings during 1951, it would be relevant to make reference to the position as regards exports and imports during that year. Much comment is often made on the fact that considerable imports of fish are permitted. Imports are unfortunately necessary as long as our home fishing fleets cannot meet the consumer demand throughout the year. It must be remembered in this connection that the consumer requires a certain amount of variety in fish supplies and it has been proved that a demand cannot be created and maintained for any one class of fish week in week out. Every care is taken, however, in the importation of fish to ensure that the quantities brought in are just sufficient and certainly not more than are required to bridge the gap between the landings by our own fishermen and the requirements of the market.

In 1951 the value of imports of fresh and cured fish was £295,000; in addition, fish preserved in sealed containers to the value of £526,000 was imported. A heavy proportion of the fresh fish imported consisted of herrings which were needed by the trade when herrings were not being landed by our own fishermen. The cured fish consisted mainly of smoked fish in the form of smoked fillets of cod or such fish and kippered herrings. As I said before, it is hoped to reach the stage eventually when we will not require imports of such magnitude, as it is expected that our own inshore boats, plus the larger boats which will be employed to supplement their efforts, will eventually be able to keep a more or less adequate supply of fish on the market throughout the year.

As regards fish in sealed containers, the position is, and I think it will be agreed by most people, that tinned fish has a place on the consumers' list in all countries, as fish so preserved has the attraction of being easily handled and readily available in all parts of the country. It is a fact that such fish is preferred by many people to fresh or smoked cured fish. The position will probably remain that imports will be necessary until such time as we are in a position to undertake the canning of fish ourselves. This is not a development which can be lightly undertaken as canned fish must be available in a large range of varieties and, furthermore, the variety which is in keenest demand is salmon. To bear the expenses of canning and marketing, salmon would have to be available at a very low price, and as there is a keen and constant demand in the fresh state for all the salmon we can produce there is very little hope that salmon will ever be available in this country for canning purposes.

As against the imports of fish, it may be mentioned that in 1951 our exports of all classes of fish came to £1,027,000; sea-fish came to £160,200, while the fresh-water fish, salmon, trout and eels and some rough fish, came to £866,800. Taking our extern trade in fish as a whole, we find that we had a balance in our favour of about £206,000.

As regards inland fisheries, conditions of water and weather during 1951 season in general favoured fishing by commercial methods rather than rod and line. The statistics for captures of salmon by the various methods came to 25,270 cwt. valued at £731,826 in 1951 as compared with 18,778 cwt. for which £563,024 was returned in 1950.

The salmon season in 1951 was characterised by good runs of fish in those rivers which rely in the main on spring fish. The large spring fish, which have been declining for some years, showed a welcome increase and the improved catches in many rivers in the months of February and March must be attributed to the high proportion of fish of this class. The late spring and early summer fish which run from the end of April until about the 10th June in a normal year were probably less numerous than usual and this accounted for the very poor catches in most rivers during that period.

The runs of grilse, which are small fish with an average weight of 6-7 lb., took place much later than usual and the peak of the run in most areas was two to three weeks later than normally expected. Despite the lateness of the run the catches of grilse were remarkably good and in many areas in this respect the season was as good as that of 1941, when exceptionally good runs of grilse were also experienced. The abundance of grilse in the late rivers more than compensated for the paucity of early summer fish and almost without exception the catches of salmon in 1951 were an improvement on those of 1950.

The position regarding inland fisheries is generally satisfactory but the experience of boards of conservators throughout the country is that the statutory sources of revenue available to them—chiefly fishery rates and fishing licence duties—are proving to be year after year to an increasing extent inadequate to afford an adequate protection service. This is due chiefly to the need for expanded and better protection in view of the incentive to illegal fishing which is offered by the current high prices for salmon, and the progressive rise in wage levels for all classes of protection staff. These financial difficulties have become acute in many areas and I have under consideration proposals under which I hope that additional funds may be made available on the basis of contributions by the industry itself towards the cost of obtaining that protection without which the industry cannot prosper.

The sum of £65,000 set down in the Estimate under sub-head F (5) is the amount expected to fall due for payment as compensation to those who can show that they suffered loss through the abolition of fresh-water netting by the operation of Section 35 of the Fisheries Act, 1939, as from the 1st January, 1948. Amounts totalling over £67,000 have been paid to date in respect of such claims. Since the passage of the Fresh-water Fisheries (Prohibition of Netting) Act, 1951, the way is open for the acceptance of genuine claims and as 30th June was the last date for the receipt of claims there is every hope that the payment of compensation can be completed within the current financial year.

The provision made under sub-head H standing at £57,765 includes a substantial item of non-recurring expenditure, namely, the sum of £55,115 being the contribution of this State towards the cost of acquisition jointly with the Belfast authorities of fishing rights in the tidal waters of the Rivers Foyle and Faughan heretofore claimed by the Irish Society. The agreement for acquisition of these rights on behalf of the public has been duly executed under the authority of the Foyle Fisheries Act, 1952, and the administration of the fishery is now in the hands of the Foyle Fisheries Commission as constituted under that Act. This commission has the functions not only of conservation of the fishery as if it were a board of conservators, but also management of the property which is vested in the Governments and the power of governing the fishery by its own statutory regulations, subject only to the approval of the fishery authorities and of their respective Legislatures.

The Inland Fisheries Trust, a company registered under the Companies Acts, is now functioning, and the sum of £4,900 is provided under sub-head F (6) by way of grant-in-aid to cover expenses of administration and development of fishing waters. The Trust has already under its control extensive fisheries in Counties Cavan, Westmeath, Meath, Longford, Roscommon and the Midlands generally, as well as in County Cork, and a special staff is working on Lough Sheelin in the elimination of predatory fish. It is the policy of the Trust to develop all waters under its control on a planned scientific basis, so that ultimately they may be as productive of brown trout as they possibly can be. The financial provision is a modest one, and lest it should be criticised as being inadequate, I should like to emphasise that more important than financial assistance at this stage is the co-operation without which the Trust cannot be expected to function—the co-operation of the trout fishermen of the country by becoming members of the Trust and taking an interest in the programme of work which it has in hands.

As well as the efforts of the Trust, encouragement is also provided in a number of forms for the improvement of fisheries through the agency of angling associations. Such bodies often think solely in terms of restocking the waters under their control, and while increased provision is made for the schemes under which brown trout ova are made available at subsidised prices, it is right to point out that funds are also provided to encourage associations in activities such as the protection of spawning fish and the destruction of pests such as cormorants, otters and coarse fish. It may well be said that efforts at restocking are worthless if not integrated into a general scheme of protection and improvement. The increasing realisation of this fact is becoming evident in the growing number of angling associations who now undertake schemes for the removal of coarse fish. Considerable interest is also being shown in the experiments which are being conducted by our scientific staff in connection with the elimination of coarse fish and fertilisation of trout waters by adding chemical nutrients.

The other items in the Estimate follow the usual lines and there is very little that I can say by way of informative comment on them. If there are any points, however, about which any Deputy desires information I will, of course, be glad to answer his queries as fully as possible.

Deirtear gurab é an gad is goire don scórnach a gearrtar i dtosach báire. Má's eadh, ní h-íonú go bhfuiltear ag tabhairt tús áite do réiteach na faidhbe chasta úd, ganntan éisc fhairrge. Allmhuirítear cuid mhaith éisc úir gach seachtain. 'Sé soláthar dóthan tíre den iasc seo chomh luath in Eírinn agus is féidir é, príomhchuspóir an Bhóird nua Iascaigh Mhara.

I was hoping that when the Parliamentary Secretary read his simple statement he would add some remarks and give us his own views on these matters, and not the views of that section of the Department of Agriculture which deals with fisheries. It has been recognised that fishing comes perhaps next in importance to agriculture but, unfortunately, as the years go by, especially since we got possession of our fisheries, and have had our own Department responsible for the welfare of the industry, it looks as if we have neither fish nor fishermen. It is almost impossible at the present time to get young men to man the fishing boats that are available along the coast. I had personal experience of this a year or two ago when a report was made that trawlers fishing in Kenmare Bay, within the territorial waters, were foreign trawlers. After a report had been made to the Department of Fisheries it was discovered that the boats really belonged to an Irish national, but that he could not possibly get Irish nationals to fish in these boats, and he was obliged to bring men from Scotland. The owner of these boats, registered here in Dublin, gave a guarantee to the Department and to me personally that if and when he could find men here in Ireland to man his boats, he would send the Scotsmen home.

When you find that some of our young men, the sons of fishermen, are not willing in these times to carry on the trade of their fathers and grandfathers, and when you cannot find any people, hitherto not connected with fishing, wishing to engage in that trade, there must be something wrong. They must foresee that there is no future in that occupation. I am not blaming the present Parliamentary Secretary for that, nor, I suppose, can I blame any of the previous Parliamentary Secretaries to Ministers for it, but there certainly must be some dereliction of duty on the part of the Department or of some Minister, in view of the fact that no progress has been made in the fishing industry during the past 13 years.

I will admit that the Department responsible for fisheries and the old Sea Fisheries Association were at all times anxious and willing to afford all the facilities possible to really good fishermen in the way of supplying them with boats and gear to carry on their calling. I would like to say that, personally—I am sure it will be news to very many people in this country and to fishermen too—I believe it would have been better if the Sea Fisheries Association had been allowed to carry on its work under the old scheme instead of setting up this new board which is now called An Bord Iascaigh Mhara. I had apprehensions, when the Bill setting up that board was going through the Dáil, that its personnel would be selected on political lines. When I see the names of the individuals who now comprise that board I feel perfectly certain that it does not represent in any way whatsoever the fishermen or those interested in fishing.

Is it a political board?

The Deputy can draw whatever conclusions he likes from what I have said. While I was glad to hear the Parliamentary Secretary mention that the policy of his Department now was to supply, as far as possible, large boats, 50-foot boats, I heard myself—I was in the audience—a member of that board distinctly state in Portmagee, County Kerry, that, so far as he was concerned, there was no use for these boats in that area. However, his statement was very soon proved false, because I discovered later that many fishermen, in fact all the fishermen in that area who could afford it—I am sure the same would apply to all other areas around the coast—were most anxious to obtain the necessary facilities by which they would be provided with these boats.

I will admit that the Sea Fisheries Association and the Department of Fisheries, in all cases where applications were made by fishermen for the larger type of boat, met those applications in a very sympathetic manner. Of course, we all understand that they are very costly boats. Some two or three years ago they cost something like £5,000. Possibly, now, the cost is £6,000, and with the gear attached to them, a further £1,000 if the fishermen are to be fully equipped. I am glad to say that, in the particular area in which I would be most interested, we eventually obtained for the area eight or ten of those 50-foot boats. The applicants pay something like a 10 per cent. deposit. I think that in cases where a fisherman with a good record in the past, a fisherman who has fulfilled all his obligations during past years, makes an application for the best type of boat and gear to enable him and the members of his family and other fishermen whom he may employ to engage in fishing, it should never be refused by the Department, and that at all times every facility should be afforded to him, even if he cannot, for the time being, afford to pay the 10 per cent. deposit. In a case of that kind, he should never be left without a boat.

The previous Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries made that a definite rule. It was carried out to the letter. I have no doubt that the present Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary are also anxious to do the very same, because, after all, if we are to make the fishing industry prosperous the first and most necessary object in view must be to supply a really good fisherman with the type of boat and gear that he thinks best to enable him to make a success of his calling. There is a difficulty in that connection as regards inshore fishermen. Because of the small type of boat they had previously, they did not go very far out to sea. When they got the larger boats they, too, would seem to have confined their operations very near the shore. I think that, if the Department instructed them to follow the fish to any distance around the coast or out to sea, they would certainly be able to meet their commitments, as regards the repayment of the advances made to them, very much sooner than they can do at present.

The inshore fishermen will now have the grievance that when some of their neighbours get those larger boats they will capture all the fish outside and so deprive them of the shoals which they would otherwise expect to meet. The Parliamentary Secretary has stated that they are about to put into operation three modern fishing boats, 100 feet in length. That is a very serious matter for the inshore fisherman and for the fisherman with the larger boat because, in reality, it will be the State in opposition to private enterprise. While a clause in the Fisheries Bill which was passed recently gives the State power to do that, I am afraid we did not realise that such a clause would be put into operation so quickly. Three modern fishing boats 100 feet long—and I suppose the State will not stop at that—can fish far out to sea and capture the shoals of mackerel, herring and so forth. That will cause a serious injury to the fishermen with the small boats who can never go out beyond a mile or two from the shore. Furthermore, it is possible that the large boats with their big catches may flood the market so that when the inshore fishermen come with their catches they may not find anybody to purchase them.

At present, even near the shore and along the shore, we never see any fish. I live in a town beside the sea. Only very seldom is any fish brought into that village. In fact, it is most difficult to get fish there and when it can be got at all it is a most exorbitant price. I understand that the men who catch the fish have a grievance that the price they obtain does not compensate them for their labours and enable them to meet their commitments in the way of repayment on their boats and gear. It is obvious, therefore, that something must be wrong. Hitherto the inshore fishermen had a grievance that they could not catch the fish because foreign trawlers, operating inside and outside our territorial waters, captured all the shoal and left them without anything.

Fishermen in all areas along the coast have been continually seeking protection in that respect. The Department of Defence are supposed to be responsible for the protection of our territorial waters but there is no protection. The Department of Defence corvettes are not suitable for the work of protecting our territorial waters. I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that it should be possible to devise some means of carrying out that work effectively. If some of the 50-foot boats or perhaps the 100-foot boats were equipped in the correct way, they too, while carrying out their fishing operations, could help to protect the territorial waters. Provision could be made for some little extra payment for fishermen thus employed. We could have look-out posts along the shore or a coast-watch service with which they could communicate at once and receive instructions as to the procedure to be adopted to prevent foreign trawlers from poaching in our territorial waters.

The real grievance of fishermen is that they have not the necessary protection. If they have that protection, and if they are supplied with the type of boat and gear which they think would best enable them to follow their calling, the only question that remains is whether or not the shoals of fish will come within their reach. As the Parliamentary Secretary has mentioned, mackerel, herrings, and so forth, are sometimes rather finicky. They resort to certain waters at certain times and then, for some reason or other, they leave these waters. However, if the fish are not there to catch certainly the blame cannot be laid on the Parliamentary Secretary or the Minister in charge of the Department. In order to protect fishermen, and especially fishermen with 30-foot, 35-foot or 40-foot boats, it is essential that look-out posts should be manned along the coast. We have frequently asked the Department to do that. In the past three or four years there have been some very sad accidents to fishermen in my own area. If these outposts along the south coast, which are at present dismantled, had been properly manned and equipped, it is probable that these valuable lives could have been saved. We should not think of the cost where lives are concerned.

Again we have these old primitive piers or slips, and I have seen at various times at Reenard Point pier in Cahirciveen when the fishing is good and when a number of boats come in laden with fish, they must wait there for a very long time before they can land their catch. For years past representations have been made by the fishermen, by Dáil Deputies and by various bodies to have that pier and some other piers improved. Nothing has been done. The matter is still under consideration. I fail to see why something could not be done in that way if we are really serious in improving the fishing industry. After all you cannot expect men to go out to fish if they are not properly equipped with boats and gear. You cannot expect them to take up that occupation if the territorial waters are not protected properly and if there is not some lifesaving service or some look-out post which will enable them to feel that if an accident occurs rescue will soon take place. Neither can we expect them to carry out their calling and carry on this business of fishing unless they have proper piers and slips on which to land their catch.

When I was speaking of the supply of boats of the best type, I forgot to mention that I believed it would now be necessary—and I am sure that it is being done in various cases—that these large boats should be supplied with radar which would enable the fishermen to arrive at the proper fishing places and to discover the shoals so that there might be no waste of time in getting fish.

As regards the inland fisheries there has been a most despicable practice in many areas of poisoning rivers. It is disgusting to find in the morning so many salmon fry and fish of all kinds floating dead on the surface of the water. It is a practice that has been carried out not only in my own areas but, I suppose, in various areas.

It is not so bad at all in Kerry.

They would not be very far behind in Cork. There is a serious lack of morale among the people. I know, of course, what the ordinary people say, that the fish belong, perhaps, to foreigners, but I believe that if all the fish of the various rivers and lakes were handed over to the local farmers, as has sometimes been suggested, the position would not improve. Jealousies will always arise and so far as the poisoning of rivers is concerned, if the culprit is discovered and if it is distinctly proved that he is responsible for the destruction done to the fish in the river, to an important Irish industry, the law should inflict on him the most severe from of punishment. Deputy Corry is laughing. I hope he has not been responsible for anything like that, even though he may be responsible for a great deal.

As I do not wish to delay the House any longer and as I have covered the various points I wished to bring forward and which might help the Parliamentary Secretary and his Department I merely wish to say that so far as this important industry is concerned, nothing should be left undone which would improve the lot of the fishermen around our coasts so that an industry which was, at one time at least, considered second to agriculture, may still progress and so that the fishermen of this country may be able to follow their calling and make a decent living at the occupation which they follow.

After the rather painful exhibition we had over there for the last hour on this matter, I would like, first of all, to say that we are thankful that we have now a Deputy in charge of fisheries in this country who is not guilty of making the public pronouncement that he hated fish and that he considered it one of the worst features of Catholic teaching to have to eat fish on Friday. When the interParty Government put a creature of that type in charge of fisheries in this country it is no wonder we went rather astray.

That is not a very helpful statement anyhow.

What did you do for fisheries from 1932 to 1948?

Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted, and 20 Deputies being present,

We had the complaint made by those in charge of our trawlers that they could not get the crew to man them. They had to go to Scotland to get crews. The next contradiction was we were told the fishermen were most anxious to get a larger type of boat. I wonder what they wanted a larger type of boat for if they could get no one to man it except Scotsmen? Then we had a protest against the 100-foot boat that the fisheries branch was getting. Then we had a complaint about the foreign trawlers coming in and taking our fish. Was there ever such a mixum-gatherum from the front bench opposite? The front bench is falling asunder pretty fast.

I have spent the past eight or nine years writing to the fisheries branch of the Department of Agriculture in connection with the pier at Ballycotton. There was very little use writing there during the last three and a half years whilst the £94,000,000 were being spent. I do not know who got that money. The pier in Ballycotton has been neglected for a number of years. It has fallen into such a state of disrepair due to neglect, that last winter it was broken up, and half of it was washed away by the tide. The responsible member of the Sea Fisheries Association living in the district actually prohibited the purchase of any large boats or, indeed, any fishing boats by the people in the district because there was no adequate shelter for them.

The Parliamentary Secretary visited the district, and he has seen the condition of affairs there for himself. He has a knowledge of the fishing industry, and unlike his predecessor, he knows the conditions under which the larger boats envisaged by the fisheries branch will have to operate. They will require harbours and proper piers in which they can shelter during adverse weather.

The harbours are there.

I have told the Deputy before that that is just the talk of a man selling twopenny exercise books and penny pencils.

That does not arise on the Estimate and it should not be said by the Deputy.

I am anxious that work on the pier at Ballycotton should now go ahead. The Parliamentary Secretary has received proposals from the local authority concerned and the county council in connection with it. We hear a lot of talk from Ministers and Deputies in relation to the importation of things that can be produced within the country itself. If you visit the town of Bantry you would think you were in Spain because 90 per cent. of the people you meet there are sailors off a Spanish trawler having come in there for shelter. When one sees that condition of affairs one can only conclude that it is time the fisheries branch took a tumble to itself and decided to put vessels at the disposal of the fishermen to enable them to supply the country with fish. The sooner that is done the better it will be.

I am glad that the Parliamentary Secretary in charge of the fishing industry has a personal knowledge of fishing. He knows just where the shoe pinches. I want to know from the Parliamentary Secretary when he intends to introduce the legislation recently guaranteed by him to take the river fisheries out of the hands of the foreigners who operate them and vest them in the State. We have the extraordinary position of farmers paying annuities and rates in my constituency for the ground over which the river flows, a river that a foreigner holds and has the right to let to another foreigner who comes along to fish there from the farmers' lands along the river bank. I think that anomaly should cease. The Parliamentary Secretary's Bill in connection with that will be a welcome one. I do not want to go into details of the ends these people had to adopt in an endeavour to bring home to those in authority the condition of affairs under which they were paying for land out of which the foreigner had the right to take anything that was any good.

Coming from a constituency where fishing was—I use the word "was" deliberately—a very important industry, it is only right that I should make a few brief comments on this Estimate. I am not personally very conversant with the fishing industry, though I live very close to the sea, but I have been asked by a number of fishermen to put a few points before the Minister. It is very difficult to understand the decline in the fishing industry in recent years, but I believe that unless some definite measures are adopted in the near future, that decline will continue until the industry is completely wiped out. I know many fishermen in my constituency and know only too well that the majority of them are finding it very difficult to get anything near a reasonable income from fishing at present. I know well that it is almost equally difficult to assign reasons for this position.

I believe that, years ago, there was no area where fishing was more prosperous than around the coast of the constituency I represent, West Cork. I have been informed by various elderly men, old fishermen, around the coast that such centres as Bantry, Schull, Castletownbere and Baltimore were hives of industry and that barrels of fish were exported from these ports in years past. Unfortunately, that is not the position to-day and very little, if any, fish is being sent off from some of these centres. When fishing was in its heyday, it was of advantage not only to the fishermen but to the traders and others in the towns and villages. The money the fishermen earned was an advantage to traders, publicans and so on. They had the money and it went around, to the advantage of the whole community.

It is, as I say, very difficult to assign reasons for the decline in recent years, but it has been put to me by experiencd fishermen that one of the principal reasons is the havoc wrought by foreign trawlers. Everybody knows that these foreign trawlers are doing damage all around our coast at present and depriving our Irish fishermen of a livelihood, and I believe that some more definite measures to prevent these people coming within the three-mile limit must be adopted. More money must be made available by the Department of Defence, which I believe is the Department concerned, to protect the livelihoods of our Irish fishermen.

I know that this is not a national but an international question, but various people who know and understand everything connected with fishing believe it would be a very good day's work for our fishermen if we could get an agreement to extend the three-mile limit. From inquiries I have made, I understand that that is something very difficult to do, as it is an international question. However, before leaving that point, I want to impress as forcibly and as strongly as I can on the Parliamentary Secretary now in charge of our fishing industry to make the strongest representations possible to the Department of Defence to secure extra boats for the protection of our coast from the foreigners who are coming not only from England, Scotland and Wales but from Spain as well.

The second reason which our fishermen assign for the decline in the industry is that many of them, for financial reasons, have to contend with very ill-equipped boats. I know a number of people who have boats which are not capable of weathering any rough seas or of moving out too far from the coast. They have consequently to confine themselves to areas within a very short distance of the coast and it is only natural that their incomes should be greatly reduced on that account. If they had boats which could weather storms and which would enable them to be more courageous and to face out into the open sea, their catches would be much larger. I know what the Sea Fisheries Association is doing so far as making loans available to fishermen for the purchase of boats is concerned, but I believe they are rather too strict and should work on a much more businesslike basis. From the information at my disposal, they are very careful lest they be caught out. As Deputy Palmer pointed out, any decent fisherman who is able to put up reasonable surety should have no difficulty whatever in getting funds for equipping his boat, and I hope that a change of attitude will take place in regard to the making of loans and, indeed, grants. We have grants for this, that and the other, and I cannot for the life of me see why grants should not be made available to suitable applicants, applicants whose families have spent years fishing our high seas, and it would be a very good day's work if the Parliamentary Secretary drew up a scheme whereby grants, together with interest-free loans, could be made available to our fishermen.

Another point mentioned in the discussion was the inadequacy of many of the piers and slips around the coast. I am not conversant with other districts, but I feel sure that there is no place which suffers more from that point of view than the West Cork coastal district. We have time and again made representations to every Government which held office since the inception of the State, with, I regret to say, very little result. Deputy Corry mentioned the need for a pier at Ballycotton. That is a question which has been dealt with at the county council meeting simultaneously with another somewhat similar but more important matter from the point of view of my district, the provision of a breakwater at Schull. The parish priest of Schull has gone to great extremes to try to get a Government grant for the erection of a breakwater at Schull pier to protect the fishermen's boats. At present, because there is little or no protection there, on a night of gale the fishermen live in fear of finding in the morning that their boats have been wrecked completely. That state of affairs should not be allowed to exist in the year 1952. I would impress on the Parliamentary Secretary, as the parish priest of Schull and a number of fishermen who came with him as a deputation to Cork County Council impressed on the members of that body, the urgent need for this breakwater.

Numerous applications are made for the erection of piers and slips at other quarters to help the fishermen. I know that it is very difficult from every angle, financial and engineering, to go into all those applications, but little or no effort is made. I think it is only reasonable to ask that some qualified person, engineer or otherwise, should look into those applications and report whether they are justifiable. It is very regrettable that irrespective of whether they are justifiable or not it takes two or three years before they are examined by an engineer of any description whatsoever. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to accommodate as soon as possible people who make justifiable applications and to try to get all applications examined within at most eight or nine months.

I put down a question in this House about a very important matter and I regret to say that I got an unfavourable reply. I believe that Deputy Corry touched on it a few moments ago. I cannot see for the life of me why in this country of ours which is supposed to be a Republic we have stretches of river confined solely and entirely to one individual family, in some cases to Lord This or Lord That and in others to Sir So and So. That state of affairs should not be allowed to obtain. Every river in the country should be free for every man, woman and child irrespective of who they are or what they are. It is regrettable in the year 1952 we should have stretches of river here, there and everywhere—even in my own county I know a number—confined exclusively to one family. I do not wish to cast any aspersion on anyone but the majority of those families, or I could say all of them, are Irish neither in name nor in origin. I do not see why that privilege should continue and I hope that before the next 12 months have gone by it will be withdrawn. I hope that by then these rivers where such privileged people enjoy the fishing rights can be fished in by every man, woman and child with no thanks to anybody. That is reasonable and I believe that Deputy Corry had the same opinion.

Even though I live close to the sea I have no practical knowledge of fishing and consequently it is rather difficult for me to make further comments, but I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to take his courage in his hands and deal as bravely as he can with this very important industry and, if necessary, to provide more money to restore it to the place everybody admits it held in former years, that of the second most important industry in the country, the industry second only to agriculture. I feel sure that if he adopts that attitude he will have the support, not only of every member of the House but of every citizen in the State.

I think that fishing should be our principal industry because, first of all, we have unlimited supplies of what might be called the raw material, we have fish in abundance off our coasts; and secondly, we have a sufficient number of fishermen. That being so, all that is needed is to put sufficient money into its development and make it the most important industry in the country. That is a matter for the Government. Fisheries should not be tied as a tail-end to agriculture. The industry is of such importance that it should be allocated a Minister and in that way it would get the attention it deserves. Up to now we have been toying with it and it is about time that some earnest effort should be put into it and not alone effort but money. Any money spent on that industry will pay immediate and substantial dividends. We have not far to go for examples. Other countries in Europe make a success of the industry and they are no more favourably placed than we are. We have everything they have and more. All that we lack is money, and the borrowing of large sums for this purpose would be justifiable even under present financial conditions.

I feel very strongly about fishing rights on rivers. Other Deputies have mentioned the question. The fishing rights on these rivers are, in the main, held by absentee landlords whose estates have been bought out by the Land Commission. It is not and it was not right that they should have been allowed to hold on to the fishing and gaming rights. It is time now that our Government got control of these valuable rights for the people. Many farmers whose lands border rivers which have supplies of salmon and trout cannot fish at the foot of their own farms. In most cases they are not even allowed to take out a licence. We hear talk of the rings, but it is one of the hardest rings to get inside in this country.

In my constituency, as in other places, there are demands for slips and for piers. I would remind the Parliamentary Secretary about the pier at Portaleen. I know that he knows about it and its importance, and also about the difficulties connected with it. Deputy Murphy mentioned some port in his constituency where ships were in danger, due to storms. At this pier I mention in my constituency, not alone are the boats in danger but the danger is so great that no insurance company will undertake to insure the boats against being wrecked in the winter time. That gives an idea of the importance of providing suitable facilities there.

I understand there is a scheme for the training of young men in the business of fishing. I do not know whether it has got under way or not, but it is a thing that should be developed and extended. I know of some young men who have gone into the industry in a fairly big way. They have bought large-sized boats of their own and they are taking a pride in that business. Scientific fishing is something that any young man should seriously consider taking up as a career. It is all right to talk about fishing and about boats, but sometimes we find that when the fish are landed there is not a market for them. It is very important to develop a market, but it is only by having regular supplies that people will develop a taste for fish and thereby a market will be fostered. Haphazard, irregular deliveries—some this week and none for two weeks— do not encourage the housewife to have a fish day or two fish days every week. It will be necessary to have fish available nearly every day if we are to get our Irish people to develop a taste for it. That is really important and everything should be done to encourage young men to take up scientific fishing as a career.

While I fully appreciate the importance of this Estimate, I shall be as brief as possible. Perhaps that is necessary in view of two facts. One is the formation of this newly appointed board: we are not yet in a position to know whether the new departure will be the success we are hoping for. Naturally, since such a short time has elapsed, it is futile for us to go into any discussion on that. The other reason for confining the remarks to a few items is that if members go through the debates on Fisheries for a long number of years they will find that consistently a number of Deputies from the seaboard areas were coming in here, from all Parties in the House, expressing their views on the importance of putting the fishing industry in a proper place in the overall economic position of the country; yet while some of the members are still members and others have left the House, with all they did and as a result of all the views they expressed so earnestly and sincerely, it is regrettable to listen this evening to the Parliamentary Secretary, in introducing this Estimate, say that, taking it as an overall picture, the amount of fish landings is—as we usually hear— decreasing.

I would like at this stage to ask one question, which has a direct bearing on the livelihood of inshore fishermen. While some of us here have stressed the importance of considering also the broader aspect of deep-sea fishing, the Parliamentary Secretary here this evening, the same as Deputy Dillon when he was Minister and spoke on fisheries himself last year or the year before, dwelt more or less all the time on inshore fishing. That being the case, I am anxious to raise this point. When is a salmon not a salmon?

When he is a kelt.

When is a peal not a peal? It may seem to be a joke to ask these questions, and people outside this House might think that we are just trying to "raise a hare". However, it is of vital importance to the fishermen in such areas as south Cork and west Cork, and all round the west coast and the north-west coast—in fact, everywhere that fishermen are engaged in fishing where they are trying to help themselves and their families financially by selling salmon. They are anxious to have this question answered—why is it that continuously year after year fishermen are being robbed by those in the ring, who will not pay a proper price for salmon? At some periods the gentry who tell us that they are not making a profit on the sale of fish will tell the fisherman who has landed a salmon that, because it is under five lb., it is a peal. On other occasions they may say that a fish that is under eight lb. is a peal. These dishonest people never say to the purchaser in the retail shop that the price of a salmon is reduced because it is a peal. They are robbing the fishermen and they are fleecing the purchaser. The housewife who buys salmon is told that there is no such thing as a peal. She has to pay the full price while at the same time the man who is entitled to the greatest consideration, the fisherman, is unjustly treated by the members of this ring.

I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to try to throw some light on this problem. It is of vital concern to the people engaged in fishing. On many occasions I have heard fishermen complain that they got 4/6 a lb. and that the fish was sold in the fishmonger's shop at 7/6 and 8/- a lb. The sooner that is stopped the sooner we will show that we are interested in the fishermen more than in the getrich-quick robbers.

I am glad that, as the Parliamentary Secretary stated, it is the policy of the new board to continue building boats of 50 feet and that they have three larger vessels in course of construction of up to 100 feet. Deputy Cunningham expressed his views on this important subject but I say that it is futile to imagine that under our present methods we can make the fishing industry the success we want it to be. Up to the present time we have more or less concentrated on inshore fisheries, which meant that in practically every week of the year the supply never met the demand. People almost forgot that there was such a thing as fish. Health authorities express the importance of fish, but our people have gained the reputation of not being fish-eaters simply because fish was not available to them.

In view of the present high cost of meat it is essential to provide fish for our people to help them to balance the household budget. If, as a result of the activities of the board, an increased amount of fish can be landed to supplement catches in the inshore fishing areas, ultimately, purchasers in every area will be facilitated. The policy of each Government has been wrong in this respect. They have considered, as we all do, the importance of protecting the inshore fisherman but often they were creating a monopoly by not having a surplus quantity of fish. I do not suggest that that should be brought in by foreign trawlers but that we could keep a certain amount of fish landed by Irish boats manned by Irishmen.

I wish well to this venture. I sincerely hope that it will have the success that we hope it will have, that it will help to supplement the miserable quantity of fish at present being landed and put on sale. If increased landings can be achieved, I hope the policy of the new board will be somewhat different from the policy pursued in the past, of sending fish landed on the south or west coast to Dublin and returning to country areas anything that was left. We want a change in that policy. I do not begrudge the people in Dublin the fish that they need. We are anxious to send them as much fish as possible but we also want our people in coastal areas to get fish.

It is vitally necessary to build extra boats. It is equally essential to have them built at the most economic price. I have been informed that we are prepared to embark on a policy of giving orders to firms in Scotland and Germany for boats for the fishing industry in this country, at the expense of the men employed in the boatyards here. It is no justification to say that the foreigners' estimate is cheaper. It means, as I know from the position in some of our boatyards, paticularly one boatyard in the area that I come from, that men who had been employed at good wages in those boatyards have been disemployed, and are now unavailable in those yards. It seems the tenders submitted by the proprietors of these shipyards have not been considered competitive enough against the foreigner. We shall be broadminded in our general outlook, but we cannot be so broadminded as to say that a Scotsman or a German is welcome to earn his living building boats for our shipping industry at the expense of Irishmen. I am anxious that the Parliamentary Secretary should give us any information available to him on that matter.

I will again lay stress on the vital importance of clearing up this question of the price of salmon. In my opinion, this is a matter that we are going to decide by our actions in this House. Some of us are doing our utmost in this matter and we are fulfilling our responsibility by drawing the attention of the House to it. Having done so, we expect that the Parliamentary Secretary will have the matter investigated.

I will say, in passing, that the Parliamentary Secretary, during his term of office, has at all times acted in an honourable and creditable manner towards all members of the House. I will go further and say that I found when reading any debate to which he contributed or any statement made by him in this House, that he knew his job. We draw attention in this House to this important matter not to gain kudos for the Party to which we belong but to try to gain something for the fishermen who are struggling year in year out to try to make a living.

The price of salmon is of equal importance to the fishermen and to the person who wishes to buy a piece of this fish. I am quite aware that everybody cannot afford to indulge in such a luxury. I know that, normally, the working man's wife who is rearing a family could never rise to a piece of salmon. However, the people who can afford to buy it are entitled to get it at a fair price. The ring that operates against fishermen, and which seems to have its own protection must be broken.

I am not admitting for a moment that things are happy in the fishing industry. I say that they are no better than they were when we spoke on this important subject before. Owing to the fact that the new board has not yet had time to show that its approach would be correct, I suppose it is only fair to the Parliamentary Secretary and to the members of the board to defer our remarks until a later stage. When we are in a position to offer our criticisms they may not suit either the Parliamentary Secretary or the members of the board. When that day comes, please God, we shall all be united, as we have been during this debate, in our desire to see the fishing industry put on a solid, strong, financial basis.

I had no intention of intervening in this debate. However, I think I would not be doing my duty if I did not protest against the attack made by Deputy Desmond on the fish merchants. As a Cork Deputy, I take it that he was dealing with the Cork fish merchants. I am acquainted with practically all of these merchants, and I must say that they are a most respectable body of men. As the Parliamentary Secretary, I am sure, is aware, they take a keen interest in their business, and they have to put up with very irregular supplies of fish. Some weeks they get a good supply for Friday and the week afterwards they may not get any supply at all. However, they must continue paying their rent and rates, their bills for wages, lighting and so forth. Staff must be retained whether or not supplies are obtainable. To call these merchants would-be robbers, in a general sense, is entirely wrong. Practically every one of these fish merchants, in Cork City at any rate, can be seen working in his shop, generally with his coat off, doing his business with the aid of a couple of hands.

I did not mention Cork City.

You were talking about fish merchants. I just want to make it clear that the fish merchants in Cork City are as decent a body of men as I have ever met. In my opinion, other sections would merit much more severe criticism than those men who, as I said already, have to depend on very irregular supplies of fish and who must keep on paying all the time. As Deputy Desmond is aware, I am not a defender of people who charge unfair and high prices. If the whole question of their outlay were examined, I feel it would be found that their margin of profit is much lower than that of many other traders. Yet, they are the section who are being most vigorously attacked in this House for the past couple of months. They were criticised during the discussion on the Fisheries Bill, and now they are being attacked during this debate.

I mentioned buyers.

You mentioned buyers and sellers.

I can stand over what I said.

A couple of statements have been made here, and I feel that one must relate them because they rather surprised me. Deputies Corry, Desmond and M. P. Murphy said that people fish along the banks of rivers and in rivers for which farmers are paying annuities. It was also stated that certain rivers are deliberately poisoned. As the Deputies who spoke come from Cork and Kerry, the inference I drew was that the poisoned rivers were in Cork and Kerry. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to give us some information on that matter and to tell us whether or not the statements made were loose and wild ones for which there is no justification. In my own experience I have never known of any case in which a river was deliberately poisoned for the purpose of destroying the fish so that the people that owned the river would not get any benefit from it. Why introduce these things? Apart from raising social distinctions, apart from the ownership of these rivers there is a way of dealing with that. Surely we have reached the stage of development where these things can be done in an ordered way as they must be done since we are dealing with the rights of property. It is not for us to determine how these rights were originally acquired. Speaking generally, they were acquired for a consideration. At the time of the passing of the Wyndham Land Act, when agreements were entered into for the sale and purchase of estates, the tenants surrendered the fishing rights attached to the sporting rights on the estates, They voluntarily agreed to it. That occurred with regard to sporting rights in the estate on which I was born. Surely it is too late in the day—practically half a century after the Act of 1903 was passed—to come along to-day and complain when the people voluntarily negotiated the agreement and gave away the sporting rights with regard to shooting and fishing in respect of the rivers on these estates. I was not pleased with the allegation made this evening in regard to the poisoning of rivers. Are there people in this country who would do that sort of thing in this age? If these rivers are to be taken over from their present owners it must be done by operation of law and for a consideration. Therefore, one can foresee the tragedy of destroying the fish in these rivers as soon as the State finally takes over the rivers.

One feels perplexed as to the bona fides of these statements. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will specially refer to them. It would be an odious and very bad thing for this country, which is endeavouring to advertise its fishing and shooting rights in order to attract tourists that these things should occur. To me they are barbaric. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will say that these statements are without foundation.

Generally speaking, one feels it difficult to get one's teeth into this Estimate owing to the developments that have taken place in this country during the last six or nine months. In the first instance, we have had the Sea Fisheries Association abolished and a new body superseding it. One cannot throw bouquets at the Sea Fisheries Association but yet one must admit that this body of men, who acted voluntarily, gave their time gratuitously for the benefit of this industry and that they did reasonably well.

With regard to the new body, from its composition, as announced by the Department, I am sorry to say that I have no confidence whatever in its constitution—none whatever. I want to be bold enough to make that prophecy. I do not think the men either by reason of their ability or their training are fit and proper persons to do the job that is in hands, particularly having regard to the speeches made about the fishing industry being second only to agriculture. Statements of that kind give me the hiccup.

When one considers the state of the fishing industry there is no relation between the two. One would love to see the fishing industry second only to agriculture but Deputies sit down and we hear nothing further about the matter until the next Estimate is being considered or some new Bill is being introduced creating a new body to deal with this industry. Having looked over the names of the people appointed to the new committee, I regret that I have no confidence whatever that they will make a success of the job. I hate to have to say that but in my opinion they are purely and simply political appointments. They have not the ability to grapple with the task in hands. I hope that statement will be contradicted, that time will vindicate this body and that it may succeed in the task entrusted to it. They have a big job before them. We dealt with that matter on the Bill which was before this House a short time ago and there is no need to cover the same ground. We may pass over that part of the Estimate.

The second part of this Estimate deals with another Bill which was passed a few months ago in connection with this industry and which has reference to a river and a river area in my own constituency. When that Bill was going through this House, I made certain statements to which the Parliamentary Secretary took exception. He contradicted them with regard to the position of the fish population in this fishing area. I am now reliably informed that, so far as this fishing season is concerned, nets on that estuary have not caught half a dozen fish. I think that confirms the statements I made when the Bill to which I referred was going through the House.

The extraordinary thing about all these rivers in this State and in particular about this river for which the State contributes portion of £55,000 and the Northern Ireland Government another portion of the £55,000 is that there is not one penny allocated to this body for the development of this river with regard to re-stocking. I referred to this matter when the Bill was before the House and I wish to refer to it again because it may be that the Department would desire to place the responsibility of going to the expense of re-stocking it on the owners of the tributary rivers. I venture to say that it will not be done. The good-will of these men should be courted. Harmony should obtain and there should be joint action with regard to the re-stocking of these rivers, whether the Department would undertake the entire cost of putting so many thousand fry each year for a number of years into these rivers or come to an agreement with the owners of the rivers to pay a portion of the cost. Whatever we may think about the owners of these rivers they get very little by way of compensation or reward from the ownership of the rivers. Probably not one of them would get six salmon during the entire year. Therefore, if fishermen are to get the full benefits of the fish that are reared in the tributary rivers something should be done either by the Department or by the joint action of the Northern Government and our Government to contribute a certain amount to procure and place in the rivers a substantial amount of fry at an early date, because it would be too bad if, having taken the taxpayers' money to acquire the fishing rights of the rivers for the people, they were left in such a condition that no harvest would be reaped from the ownership of them by the State.

I have no hope with regard to the new body, none whatever, but, with regard to the Foyle estuary fishing, I would earnestly appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary to take steps during the forthcoming spawning season to procure fry in conjunction with the Northern Government in order to re-stock these rivers on a big scale. It will be money well spent. You cannot reap a harvest without a planting and if you plant the rivers you will reap a reward. The fishermen concerned will reap a harvest which will give them a higher standard of living and these rivers will be the asset that we hoped for when they were taken over.

With regard to trawling as against inshore fishing, apparently the Government and the Minister have decided to back the inshore fishermen. That being so, let us all put our heads together and back up that and give every inducement we can to the inshore fishermen to make a success of their business. But they cannot and will not make a success of it unless the new Fisheries Commission do their job. That is the key to the whole problem. Therefore, I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will take an active interest in this commission and its operations and that he will not be mealy-mouthed in dealing with them if he finds they are not discharging the duty imposed on them in the way he desires and this House desires. There should not be any patting on the back because the present Government appointed them. They should not be regarded as sacrosanct because of that. If they prove to be incompetent, the Parliamentary Secretary should come to this House and give us the facts and he will get our support in replacing them by somebody more fitted for discharging the duties.

I can see no future for the fishing industry with a body like that. They have not the record or the tradition. They have not the business capacity to deal with the problem. All these things are essential in tackling a job of that kind. Firstly, the men must have natural ability; secondly, they must have the training in and the experience of organising a business successfully before they can approach this matter properly.

Here is a job for which you require able and competent men who have had experience of some business on a large scale dealing with production, marketing, advertising and distribution. That is the type of man that you require to make a success of our sea fisheries. There is no use in talking about the fishing industry being second only to agriculture. It is only making a laughing-stock of ourselves. Anyone with experience of business looks upon statements of that kind as a mere joke. It is incredible that one has to listen to such stuff. There is no comparison between the two, because there is no real approach to doing the job properly and in the way that is required by men who are competent owing to their natural ability and training and experience to carry it out.

This is a maritime country. For the past week we have been discussing the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture. A considerable amount of interest has been taken in it and a considerable number of Deputies have contributed to the debate on it. But, living in a maritime country, when we come to consider an Estimate which should cater for the second greatest industry in the country, namely, our fisheries, we find a total of eight Deputies present. I do not wish to be controversial and I do not wish to state to which Parties these Deputies belong. But we have so little interest in this House in our fisheries, that Deputies do not consider it worth while coming in to contribute to the debate.

I have nothing but respect for the present Parliamentary Secretary in charge of fisheries. I have listened to him for some years both in this House, at the annual meetings of the Sea Fisheries Association and elsewhere and when he was appointed I looked forward to revolutionary changes in the attitude of this House and of the country to our fishing industry. But I regret to say that things are going from bad to worse so far as the fishing industry is concerned. The first thing we must consider is a market for our fish. Unfortunately down through the years Dublin has been the market for our fish. We cannot see beyond the City of Dublin although we have inland towns in this country in which people tell us that the very name of fish stinks in their nostrils because the fish which they see stinks before it gets to them.

The first thing we must do is to open up our fish market. We must do that, not in the City of Dublin, but in the other towns and in rural Ireland generally. I looked forward to the present Parliamentary Secretary initiating a scheme whereby every town and village would have a supply of fresh fish at least twice per week. I looked forward to the Parliamentary Secretary opening in every town a small fish shop with a frigidaire plant installed. I looked forward to the Parliamentary Secretary supplying these towns with fish by means of frigidaire vans at least twice per week. Not one step has been taken to open up the hinterland of this country to the fishing industry. Actually last week prime fish were sold in the City of Dublin at the lowest price at which they had been sold for the past 15 years. Prime fish were being sold at 2/6 per stone. I do not grudge the poor people of the city all the fish they can buy at 2/6 per stone. But I wonder are the poor of Dublin getting the advantage of the method and the manner by which fishermen are being defrauded? It is possibly true that we have to educate our people into the cooking and eating of fish. I think we are not taking sufficient advantage of the picture-houses and the vocational schools for the education of our people in the cooking and eating of fish. I think that at least once per week there should be a short addendum to each newsreel shown in the picture-houses of this country explaining the various methods of boning and cooking fish. Britain did it during the recent war and there is no reason why we should not follow the example of Britain in that respect.

Take for instance the ordinary herring. The ordinary housewife in the Midlands knows not of its uses other than to fry it or to boil it. "Shorts" could be given in our picture-houses displaying other methods by which fresh herring, salt herring or soused herring could be made edible. Having educated our people into the eating of fish, the next step we should take is to see that there should be continuity of supplies. We should see that the people of rural Ireland and of the inland towns should get fresh fish at least once or twice per week. Having guaranteed continuity of delivery, then and then only should we set about guaranteeing continuity of supply.

In my opinion our first step should be to extend our territorial waters. Some of our Norse neighbours have done it. Iceland has been the last to do it. There is no reason under the sun why we should not extend our territorial waters. Both Deputy MacBride and myself have on numerous occasions put down questions here to inquire whether the present Government proposed or considered implementing the recent Hague decision. The reply we received on each occasion was that the matter was being considered.

I should like Deputies to cast their minds back. They will recall that during the past 30 years we have had only two prosperous periods for the fishing industry. One was during the 1914-18 war and the other was during the 1939-44 war. The reason is quite obvious. Submarine warfare drove the trawler off our coasts and immediately the trawler was driven from our coasts, our inshore fisheries prospered. By extending and protecting our territorial waters, we can again ensure that our inshore fisheries will become what they were in the 1914-18 period and in the period of the last war. I think there should be some liaison between the naval branch of the Department of Defence and our fisheries. If there were, there would be no difficulty whatever in protecting and extending our territorial waters. If that were done, we could guarantee continuity of supply. Having got our continuity of supply and continuity of delivery, and having procured a permanent Irish market for our fish, we could ensure and guarantee prosperity for our fishermen or at least a prospect of prosperity.

Instead of that what do we find? We find the board recently set up going abroad to acquire three German trawlers. I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary what these three German trawlers have cost the state. I should like also to ask him why these trawlers have not been built in that excellent boatyard at Killybegs. He will possibly answer me by saying: "These trawlers are built of iron; the only thing we can do in Killybegs is to build wooden ships". I agree with him but do not forget at the moment around our coasts seeking the protection of our harbours we have some of the finest fishing boats belonging to the Spanish fishing fleet all of which are built of wood. If Britain considers it better to have ships built of steel there is no reason why we should follow suit. We could give considerable employment in the building of wooden ships and in my opinion we should do so.

While we were actually procuring these three German ships to augument our fishing fleet, we were curtailing the activities of our fishing fleet. I am sure it will surprise the House and the country generally to know that the representatives of the Sea Fisheries Association at Killybegs in the past month have requested the fishing fleet there to refrain from fishing on other than four nights per week. The excuse offered was: "If you fish six nights per week you are going to glut the Dublin market." These boats with fishermen from the west, south and north congregated off the Donegal coast have been requested by a representative of the Irish Sea Fisheries Association, or rather their successors, to refrain from fishing other than on four nights a week. At the same time that body is importing into this country three new German trawlers.

Deputy Dillon when he was Minister for Agriculture was instrumental in procuring plant for cold storage at Killybegs. That cold storage has not yet become operative. Instead of importing three German trawlers, if we provided many more cold storage plants around our coasts, we could when fish are plentiful, store the fish and keep them there to meet a period of scarcity and distribute them all over the country. In that way we would be guaranteeing continuity of supply.

It will surprise this House to know that last season prime cured Donegal herrings lay unsold on the harbours of Donegal for a period of nine months while we were importing from Iceland and other Norse countries, as well as Britain, salt cured fish.

We are importing tinned fish from Japan.

We are. Is it not a disgrace?

While we are unable to sell these prime cured Donegal herring, no steps have been taken to prohibit the importation of these fish.

I know that a trade agreement was entered into in 1938 whereby we undertook to import certain salted and cured fish, but, surely, during the interval, we should have reconsidered the terms of that trade agreement and protected our own fisheries. In my opinion, there should be greater liaison between the Department of Industry and Commerce and our Fisheries Department. To-day, in this House, I received a reply to a question from the Minister for Industry and Commerce to the effect that it was hoped to complete a new pier in the fishing port of Killybegs in the middle of September next at a cost to the State of £65,000. Now, some of that £65,000 has been spent in the laying of rails to the pier head. Rails have been laid from the railway depôt to the pier head. Some of that £65,000 has been spent in the laying of those rails. But, yesterday, the railway company of the County Donegal Joint Committee informed the public that they proposed closing the railway line between Killybegs and Ballyshannon, thereby cutting off railway transport from the pier head. I presume that the County Donegal Joint Committee did not do this without consulting the Minister for Industry and Commerce.

They had to.

They had to.

I do not think they did.

Does the Deputy think that they did it off their own bat?

I am afraid so.

If they did, it is a disgraceful state of affairs that the Minister for Industry and Commerce here would permit them to do so. I hope that he will see that this gross blunder of theirs is immediately remedied. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that they could persuade the Minister for Industry and Commerce that that railway line, for economic reasons, should be closed, is it not an awful state of affairs that some of that £65,000 should have been spent in the laying of rails from the depôt to the railway? I think that there should be some consultation, some liaison, between the Departments of Defence, Industry and Commerce, Fisheries and Local Government to secure proper protection and proper transport of fish to the various parts of the country.

There is one other matter to which I should refer. Again, it is one which calls for a certain amount of liaison between the Department of Social Welfare and the Department of Fisheries. Take the case of a fisherman who provides himself at the beginning of the season with a trail of nets, costing approximately £500 to £600. His gross takings for the season may amount to anything up to £1,000, while his net takings may be, say, £500. On the very last night of the season, as often happens, a tramp steamer on our coast may clean cut his entire trail of nets, and he has got to replace them. Naturally, the unfortunate part-time fisherman has to seek unemployment assistance for the remainder of the year. The position, however, is that his gross takings are taken into account and assessed against his means, with the result that he is debarred from drawing unemployment assistance for the remainder of the year.

Take also the case of one of our unfortunate migratory labourers. He crosses over to Scotland and spends two or three months there, earning, possibly, £50 to £60 net during the period. That earned income of his is not taken into account in the assessment of means for the purposes of unemployment assistance, but the unfortunate fisherman has his gross earnings assessed against him in respect of the short period during which he has been fishing.

That is one of the reasons why our fishing industry is being denuded of fishermen. No enticement is being held out to our young people to go into the fishing industry. In my opinion, scholarships should be granted to students at vocational schools to take up marine engineering, net mending, net making and navigation. In addition to awarding scholarships, some monetary consideration should be given to those youths during the period of their apprenticeship. Unfortunately, the wages across the water offer too great an inducement to our prospective fishermen to get them to remain at home. If we could give some little remuneration to those youths during the period in which they are serving their apprenticeship to the various branches of the fishing industry, we would, in that way, be encouraging them to remain here, and in my opinion we would have many more applicants for such positions than we have at the moment.

Several Deputies, including Deputy. Corry, have complained about our harbours and piers. God knows, when you think of the amount that we have spent on minor relief schemes, making bog roads that lead nowhere, we should be able to spend something on improving our harbours, piers and slips. We definitely could do something. I have in mind a case in West Donegal at a place called Curran's Port, almost opposite Tory Island. The Parliamentary Secretary knows the spot. He has been down there himself during the fishing season. The fishermen there have no place whatever in which to land their fishing craft. I have been receiving replies for the past two years that the matter is under consideration. I have received them from the Parliamentary Secretary and from his predecessor. I am attaching no blame to any particular Government individual, but surely we could cut through this red tape, and get these harbour piers and landing wharfs improved. Again, at high water in the neighbourhing port, Meenlara, the pier is actually covered to a depth of 3 or 4 feet of water. It should be quite possible to raise the pier above high level. If we did that we would be doing something to facilitate these unfortunate fishermen in landing their fish on this rugged coast.

I come now to our inland fisheries. People have complained here about various methods of poaching. The poacher does not do the amount of damage to our rivers that is alleged. What we want is restocking of our rivers. If they were restocked then the occasional salmon or trout taken out by the poacher would not affect the overall prosperity of the river. I should like to see the Department restock our rivers and lakes at least every second year. I should also like to see some experiment made in the transfer of small trout from lakes in which they do not thrive to other lakes which are denuded of fish.

I have had a personal experience of planting 50 two-year-old trout in a lake in which a trout has never been caught. The lake from which I took them does not produce trout at any greater weight than, roughly, six ounces. I transferred 50 of these trout to a lake in which there were no fish. To my amazement, I found that after two years I was able to kill trout weighing one lb. and one and a quarter lb. on the lake to which they were transferred. Local boards of conservators should be encouraged by the Fisheries Department to pursue such experiments. In that way we should be doing something good for our fishermen.

Deputy Desmond mentioned a matter which, thank God, does not apply to Donegal. During the salmon season our fishermen are completely at the mercy of the salmon dealer—and I use the word "dealer" within the meaning of the Fisheries Act. As we all know, grilse or peal as they are called in the South, are sold at a much cheaper rate than salmon. On the Donegal coast, salmon under five lb. weight is classified as a grilse. Any salmon over five lb. weight is classified as a salmon. The difference is considerable in value. I am assured that this year in County Cork salmon weighing as much as eight lb. have been classified as grilse and that the fishermen are, therefore, defrauded of the difference. I think there should be a direction from the Minister as to what are grilse, or peal, and what are salmon. With such a direction, the fishermen will know where they stand and they will not be at the mercy of the dealers.

I shall conclude on the theme on which I began. I appeal to the Minister to open up the inland towns and rural Ireland to the fish trade. If he does, he will help the fishermen and the people of Ireland generally to bring back that prosperity to the fishing industry which it enjoyed some 20, 30 or 40 years ago.

I want to say just a few words on this Estimate and I might preface my remarks by saying how glad I am to see the development in the House, particularly in regard to this matter, of the ideal of socialism. This debate clearly indicates that the general desire is that fisheries should be controlled absolutely by the State. The whole fishing industry, from the provision of boats right down to the placing of a fish in the home of the consumer, should be controlled by the State. That, as I understand it, is socialism and, as I say, I welcome the fact that there is this general desire for that type of control over our fishing industry.

When I was a boy at home in County Cavan we could always buy fresh herrings at the crossroads on a Friday. We always had a supply of salted herring in the house. That was typical of County Cavan in the days before I went to school. In those days we had no refrigerating plants——

Nor motor lorries.

——nor motor vehicles nor the speedy methods of transport which we have now. Nevertheless, we had fresh herrings when we wanted them and we always had a supply of smoked or salted fish.

They will not eat the salted fish now.

There may be a difference in taste which I cannot understand. However, that was the position forty or more years ago. I think there is a lot to be said for Deputy O'Donnell's idea of classes and instruction in the benefits of fish and in the methods of cooking fish. I look on fishing as a very desirable industry that will give employment in the coastal areas in particular— employment that will provide comfort for many homes there. To that extent, it is a valuable industry to the country and one which I should like to see developed. I think we have that opportunity now, when fishing is the responsibility of one individual, namely, the Parliamentary Secretary.

We can hope to see a complete reorganisation of the distributing side of the industry, because unless the distributing side of the fishing industry is developed in a revolutionary way there is no possibility of improving the industry very much. Without a proper system of distribution, fish cannot be brought into the villages, into the small towns and into the rural areas generally. We had a fillip in the fishing industry, as Deputy O'Donnell says, in the years 1914 to 1918. I take a different view from the view he takes as to the cause of that fillip. It was not because foreign trawlers were unable to come near our shores. I think there is plenty of fish in the vicinity of our shores to supply not only the foreign trawlers but also our own fleet. Why the fishing industry did so well in the period 1914 to 1918 and during the last Great War was that fish became an essential food. There was a better market for it in the big towns. In fact, it was the only food that was available across in Britain anyway. Any time that I visited it during the last war, there was nothing else you could get except fish of one kind or another. The people will eat the fish if they get it in the proper condition. One of the difficulties in a city like Dublin is that fish is too dear and it is too dear because of defects in the organisation of the industry. The House appears to be satisfied that there is no other method whereby Irish fishing will be developed than by the Parliamentary Secretary creating an organisation that will catch the fish, that will distribute the fish and put it, as it were, on the table of the housewife.

That will take some time and in this matter we must be patient. If we see a reasonable amount of progress each year, if we can look from year to year and say: "We have made this amount of progress in the right direction", then I think the position would be satisfactory. We must take the long view because otherwise we may build up something that may not last. In the development of an industry like this I would like to see it develop on well thoughtout lines. I want to see it develop year by year so that it can be safely said, the industry will maintain itself. The Parliamentary Secretary has a special responsibility in regard to that and not only has he a special responsibility but I can say, and I think every Deputy would say, that he has the good-will of this House in doing it.

I just contribute those few remarks to indicate my anxiety, my desire, for a proper and sane development of our fishing industry. I am delighted, as I said at the beginning, that Deputies realise that there is only one way that that can be brought about and that is by the initiative and by the organisation established by the State under the control of the Parliamentary Secretary.

I want to make just a few remarks on this Fisheries Estimate. While many Deputies, and other people throughout the country, do not seem to place it as high up in the list of priorities as other Votes that come before this House each year, I regard it—as I suppose, most Deputies belonging to maritime counties must regard it—as a very important Estimate. It is a constant source of amazement that, in an island country like this, which is surrounded on all sides by salt water and that is very rich in fish, the whole fishery industry seems to have declined almost to vanishing point, and the efforts of various Governments to revive it or put it in its proper place do not appear to have met with a great deal of success.

About 20 or 25 years ago, particularly during the time the Congested Districts Board was in operation, fishing formed a large part of the livelihood of many of the coastal dwellers and contributed in those years a substantial amount of the total volume of trade, but since then it has declined. Might I put forward the suggestion that one of the principal reasons that fishing has declined is the failure to put fish in every town and village throughout the country, to make it available quickly and to make it available in a fresh condition to as many householders as possible throughout the country.

I live in County Mayo and I am told on good authority that most of the fish used in the towns—not that there is much used—has to come from Dublin. There must be something wrong with the system of distribution that takes fish from the west coast, brings it to Dublin and sends it back again for sale to perhaps within a few miles from where it was actually caught and landed. I want to impress on the Parliamentary Secretary my personal view that the present method of the distribution of fish represents one of the principal reasons why we are not getting anywhere.

The second point I wish to make is that there is a large number of young men, particularly along the west coast, who are very skilled in the technique of fishing, knowing the good spots and the bad spots along the whole coastal area. These young men are gradually leaving us, one by one. They are taking on other occupations, mostly, I must say, in England, but some of them at home, because they do not seem to see any future in the fishing industry here. The Parliamentary Secretary should bend his efforts towards keeping those people at home because if these experts, if I may so describe them, leave us, it will take a very long time if we have to depend on men who know nothing about the industry and have to learn it from the ground up. If the hundreds of years' experience, handed down from father to son, is lost, it will be a serious blow to the whole fishing industry along the west coast.

One way to retain these people is to make boats and gear available to them. From the experience I have had and from the contact I have made with those people, I know they are willing to go out to sea, to endanger their lives for the fishing industry. That is a fact, because they have told me so, but there seems to be something wrong with the method of placing boats and gear at the disposal of those men. While the Department has made generous gestures in the past to these people, the contribution they are asked to make in the case of new boats and gear is altogether beyond their means and some plan will have to be devised to place boats at their disposal. It is obviously useless offering, say, a £3,000 boat to a fisherman or a group of fishermen if the deposit they are asked to pay, £300, £400, £500 or maybe £1,000, is beyond their means. There is no point in offering them a boat in such circumstances even though the Department may be contributing as much as £4,000 of the cost. The fact remains that the boat is there but there is nobody to take it up because the deposit cannot be met.

I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to benefit by the experience of the last 15 or 20 years and devise some means of putting the boats at the disposal of the fishermen.

There must be some other method, when that one has not proved a success, by which it can be done. To ask the people to get the boats themselves is out of the question. That would mean that the holdings in a whole townland would have to be sold. In most cases these people have no savings and they would be utterly unable to meet the demand. The Parliamentary Secretary should have a certain amount of information as to the position in his own constituency. He must be aware of the facts I am putting before him. It is quite obvious that this present method is worse than useless. There must be some other means of approach whereby boats and gear can be placed at the disposal of these people. If that is not so, then all our talk and all our voting of money here is to a large extent sheer waste of time, energy and money.

If we have skilled men around the coast and allow them to take up other occupations thereby losing them, their skill and their knowledge, then we are guilty of criminal carelessness in relation to this particular industry. The distribution of fish is in my opinion one of the most important means of reviving the consumption of fish and we should deal with that first before we consider exporting fish. I particularly want to impress on the Parliamentary Secretary the necessity for devising some means of placing boats and gear at the disposal of those who have the skill and the will to develop this particular industry. I believe the present method is a failure and it should not be beyond the competence of the Parliamentary Secretary and his officials to devise some plan that will meet with more success than the old one has met with.

The most notable feature of this debate has been the almost complete unanimity of opinion in connection with the major problems. That in itself should help to make the effort to find a solution to these problems easier because those who take an interest in them seem to know what the causes of our difficulties are.

There is a kind of vicious circle in the fishing industry. That has been shown by the views expressed on the question of distribution and the provision of supplies. Some Deputies seem to think that the amount of fish consumed would be greatly increased by the mere provision of refrigerated vans and things of that sort. I agree that would be desirable but surely we must do first things first, namely, supply the fish. By supplying the fish I mean supplying it regularly and in the variety which the public demands and supplying it also at a price which the public will be prepared to pay for it.

These three conditions impose a problem of the greatest magnitude on whoever undertakes the organising of the fishing industry. We have had attempts at organisation in the past. We had the "Hake Friday". The catching end of that was sought to be provided for in those days by the chartering of outside trawlers. A system of van transport was provided by the Sea Fisheries Association. Eventually that had to be stopped because it proved to be too costly. Whether the excessive cost had to do with the internal transportation or with the catching arrangements I am not in a position to say but at any rate an effort was made and some information was gathered as a result of that experiment.

I do not think it is necessary for me to deal individually with the points raised by the Deputies who spoke on this matter except in so far as a Deputy may have raised some point of unusual interest. I would like to refer to each Deputy personally and, if I do not do so, Deputies will understand that I am dealing in a general way with the points raised in order to utilise the time at my disposal by giving everybody as fair an innings as possible.

Deputy Palmer said that no man can be prevailed upon to take up fishing. He was chided by somebody on this side of the House because his line of thought was not quite consistent. He seemed to criticise the provision of a type of boat which would induce young men to come along and join the industry. I think we all have the experience around the coast that if these young men are to be induced to take up fishing they will have to be provided with tools suitable to the job. They will have to get a boat in which there is some freedom of movement, in which there will be a feeling of safety in bad weather, in which there will be comfortable sleeping accommodation and facilities for the provision of a good meal. I do not think one will induce any young man to take up fishing as a career unless one provides him with these amenities. Our young men have left and gone to England to work on steam trawlers there. I disagree with Deputy Blowick when he says that once a fisherman goes one cannot get him back again.

I did not say that.

I think if we provide the boats we will get our fishermen back much more quickly than we will get back others who have left our country.

I did not make that statement.

As a matter of fact I have had some of these young men back already showing an interest in getting into the industry here. We are agreed that it is a question of what sort of craft we should provide. We are trying to get a boat which a fisherman will be prepared to use. If he is to become the owner of the boat it must be provided for him within the limits of his resources. That raises a problem of great difficulty. A 50-foot boat is now becoming the standard boat apparently. That is the type of boat that is being sought by the fisherman who wants to make fishing a whole-time occupation.

A 50-foot boat when fully rigged works out at about £6,000. Up to the present under the system devised for paying for the boat the applicant must be able to put down 20 per cent. or, in special circumstances, the board is entitled to reduce that to 10 per cent. Taking it at the figure of 10 per cent., a £6,000 boat would require a deposit of £600 and we know that our fishermen around the coast, with the possible exception of those who have been operating large boats for a very long time, are not able to find £600. The new board have applied themselves to the solution of this question and, I understand, have made certain recommendations to the Department of Finance and it is hoped that some easement will be achieved. I regret that there is no result available about which I could tell the Dáil to-night.

Could the boats not be given out without any initial charge on a hiring system, with some kind of written guarantee?

I do not know exactly how I should reply to that. I have had that sort of viewpoint myself, but it has been put to me by fishermen that you should not give a fisherman a boat unless you give him some element of ownership in the boat. I do not know whether that is a psychological approach to the matter, or whether it is based on the hard practical consideration of making a man have some interest himself which would make him work better. It seems to me, however, that the universal advice in the matter is: "Do not give a man a boat unless he is given some interest which he himself owns and which is his own personal property," that in that way you spur initiative to the best possible advantage. Some compromise will have to be found if we are to do what Deputies have recommended with regard to good fishermen not being allowed to go boatless because they had not got money.

One solution that would suggest itself is that the board ought to go in more for the use of experimental boats —put a boat in a place where the tradition of fishing is dying out but where it is still in the blood of a certain section there. It is suggested that by putting the boat there and putting a good skipper in charge, you set the wheels in motion again and, in fact, you can train up a local crew and that the earnings of the boat during the experimental period would possibly provide some member of the crew with the necessary deposit. That type of thing is being considered by the board to meet the particular problem of the deposit.

From the sale of the very first catch, could it not be said that the particular skipper has a certain share in ownership and with each catch that ownership is increasing.

That is true, but if you set a man operating a boat on which he is going to get his livelihood and possibly be able to put a little aside, if the boat is entirely at the risk of the public authority he is not going to have the same interest—I think that is the general experience—as if he had put down something for the boat, even if he has to borrow.

I do not agree. Once he knows he has the means where by to pay off the whole debt, you can be sure that his interest is increasing with every catch he sells.

However, it is a problem about which we all seem to have a sharp consciousness and to be keen on solving. I have come up against it a great deal and have heard it both inside and outside the House. I want to assure the Dáil that I have asked the board to apply themselves to it and they have done so. They hope to achieve an easement of the conditions existing heretofore. If they can make the position still easier for applicants along lines similar to what I have suggested, I know that they will not neglect any opportunity of finding a solution of that sort.

Let me deal now with piers and harbours in a general way. I hope that Deputies will not expect me to deal with each one which has been mentioned. The Fishery Branch is not a harbour authority and the harbour service, outside of the commercial harbours, is a very involved business, as most Deputies who have had anything to do with it have found out. There are several authorities interested in it and, last but by no means least, there are the county councils. In a great many cases, we find that the county councils feel that they ought not to be asked to burden the rates with the provision of money for harbour works for the fishing industry. It seems to be looked upon as something that ought to be provided for entirely by the State.

In any event, you have the Board of Works and the Special Employment Schemes Office, where there is an employment problem, and you have the Fishery Branch, which is always asked to say what the state of the fishing is in the particular district and what the possibilities of development are. When we have said that, we have expended our entire authority in the matter. Nevertheless, we still have the requests coming back to us again about this question of harbours. Since assuming the responsibilities which I now have, I have given my attention to the greatest possible extent to this question—much more so than anything else I had to come up against—because of its universality—you come up against it everywhere around the coast—its great importance and particularly because we cannot give out boats, even of the 50-feet type, unless we have safe and adequate anchorage for them. One place was mentioned by Deputy Cunningham: Portaleen. When I was down there, I was told that in one place 12 motor boats were destroyed in seven years, which indicates what an intimate bearing this question of piers and harbours has on the question of the provision of boats.

We have made representations to the Government in the matter. We have pointed out to them that a very large sum of money will be required for the solution of the problem and that, as important as the money, a reorganisation of the service itself will be necessary, that we will have to stop what has been described to me as the roulette ball, sending it around from Billy to Jack, that it will have to be brought to rest somewhere. We do not mind whether it is in Fisheries, the Board of Works or Industry and Commerce, provided there is some one authority charged with the initiation and completion of the scheme. That is an important thing, because it has been established that there has been a timelag of an average period of six years in respect of these small harbour works and the Fisheries Branch is anxious to secure that that delay will be eliminated. We have taken the necessary steps, so far as the Fisheries Branch could do so, by making representations, and we expect that these representations will bear fruit, that both the organisation and the money will be provided and that this work will be carried on much more expeditiously than in the past.

The financing of these ports—I mean their maintenance after they have been completed—is a matter that will have to be worked out later, but I personally cannot see the local authorities entirely escaping. However, that is not a matter for me to speak dogmatically on. All I want is to have the jobs undertaken, done quickly and well and I feel that we are making progress in that direction.

Somebody asked what the larger boats cost and where they were got. They were bought in Germany. They are practically new boats made of steel and have every modern device and equipment that fishing science has made possible. They have been bought at about £10,000 apiece less than we could provide similar wooden boats at home. It is not because they were steel boats that they were bought and that the board changed their mind about making their own boats right from the start. The chairman of the board informed me that there was a strong opinion among members of the board that delay should not be tolerated, that they should not wait for boats to be made in our own yards, as that would mean a delay of anything from a year to a year and a half. This is particularly true in view of the delays in getting machinery because of the rearmament drive in all the countries where this machinery has to be sought. The main motive for their decision was to get boats which could be put to service quickly. In any event, quite apart from that, the value of the boats, I am reliably informed, is beyond question. I do not know that their history as it was related to me was exactly true, but I was told that they were built by some German firm for fishing in the North Sea and in far northern waters, but some complications arose owing to peculiar circumstances in Germany because of the occupation and the boats had to be tied up, but in fact the boats are practically new. They are worth twice the money given for them, I understand.

When were they built?

I think that the oldest was built in 1947. The policy of the board is to build their own boats at home. They can build boats as big as these in Donegal or Cork and can also get them built by private boat builders in various parts of the country. There is no necessity, therefore, to place orders for boats abroad in future. It had to be done in the years after the war because of the amount of arrears which had to be made up.

Deputy O'Donnell is the man who dealt with the greatest detail on the question of how we should organise the industry. In the main these recommendations are the ideas of everybody who wants to see this industry first rationalised and then expanded. We have too great a dependence on the Dublin market. We are told that fish very often travels to Dublin and then goes back to the place from which it was originally sent. We cannot blame the fisherman if, having brought fish in at a western port, he puts it in boxes and sends it to Dublin because very often if he keeps it in his local place he may lose on it. The only way that situation can be met is, as was suggested by Deputy O'Donnell, other Deputies and very many people outside, to take the fish to a handling station, fillet it, deep freeze it and have it properly and hygienically packaged and then let it out on the market as the demand comes. You can in that way avoid gluts of fresh fish and can also help to stabilise the price. That will enable the fisherman to budget a little more accurately in the running of his boat. It will also avoid too great fluctuations in price which annoy the housewife so much.

Nobody has mentioned the control of prices. Therefore I was going to slip by the matter, but there has of course, been a hearing before the Prices Advisory Body recently. Their finding has not been issued. This is a matter on which there are three opinions. Some want the control removed altogether and say that while some fish would go up in price other classes would come down. Some categories of fishermen—I might say the entire body of inshore fishermen— want prime fish decontrolled because they say that they are not getting proper prices and that as in any event 90 per cent. of it goes to hotels and more comfortable homes, if they have to pay more they can afford it. That would enable them, they say, to suffer a reduction in the price of round fish which the ordinary consumer uses. I do not know exactly where the greater wisdom lies but all we in the Fisheries Branch could do when the tribunal was hearing the case was to give the facts as the body asked for them so that they might be able to get the opinions of all the interests and groups which gave information before them.

We in the Fisheries Branch want to see the consumer of fish getting adequate supplies but at the right price. We also feel we have a very high duty imposed on us to see that the fishermen get an adequate and remunerative price. A great many things might be said on this question of sea fishing and perhaps we should withhold our judgment in relation to this development of getting into the deep and looking for our fish, to see exactly to what extent we are able to steady and rationalise the market and also the extent to which we would be able to integrate the entire production and marketing of fish as between the most insignificant curragh and these new boats. We feel that because we are marketing large quantities of fresh fish every week there is no reason for the inshore man to be apprehensive that his interests are going to be in danger by our putting out boats that will step up the production of fish. After all, the immediate object of the board is to bridge the gap between the home demand and the home landings. Surely if we do that we cannot injure the inshore men. In fact, we will not require any refrigerating or defreezing in the working out of that particular stage.

It is when we come to the point where we have saturated the market with a satisfactory supply that this demand for the preservation of fish will arise, because we then set out on the task of doing what some of the other Deputies asked also, of developing the inland towns that do not now get fish. Under the present arrangement we cannot undertake pioneering work of that sort, because we allow just as much fish in on licence as satisfies the known demand. If we are to develop the inland towns and make fish available regularly so that a taste can be cultivated for it, we will then want these handling stations and will want a very much increased supply.

It is said in the fishing industry that if you want to supply the demand you must produce anything from 10 to 20 per cent above what the demand is known to be. That creates a problem, but we feel that problems of that kind can be handled and dealt with by the introduction of fish meal manufacture. A good deal of immature fish and unsaleable fish is bound to be landed and an outlet will have to be found for that. At the present time a great deal of that fish is dumped. It is a pity that our fishermen are getting so much of it. There seems to be a very large amount of immature whiting particularly available around our coasts. The fish traders do not want it; so far as I know, the housewife does not like it; and it is a drug on the market. It is obvious that it is only in fish meal manufacture that you can find an outlet for that type of fish.

There is a number of problems which make this question awfully difficult of solution, but back of the whole thing I myself feel that the fact that we have only a population of 3,000,000 and the fact also that we eat fish in the main only on one day of the week, forms the foundation of the main difficulty. In England I believe the average Englishman eats 16 ounces of fish per week; while here the average Irishman eats only two to three ounces.

Is not that because he cannot get it?

Again there is the vicious circle. You cannot get it because it does not pay to produce it.

Why not induce the fish to give themselves up?

In Britain, because of the big population and much heavier consumption, it pays people to put large sums of private money into the enterprise—in private enterprises and large corporations. We cannot do that here, as all the pioneering has to be done by the State and we have a great many interests that could very easily be hurt or damaged by any development that we undertake. I have come up against an enormous number of conflicts in the fishing industry since I became Parliamentary Secretary. In fact, there is no direction in which you turn to improve the position but you find yourself stepping on someone's corns. What we have set ourselves out to do is to see if we can arrange these matters so that the least possible damage will be done to any interest affected.

If there are any questions arising that I have not dealt with, I would be very glad to answer them. I would ask the Dáil to indulge me for a moment or so while I give the trend of some figures which have been supplied to me on the imports of fish. The average figure of imports in the pre-war years was 129,000 cwt. and the value was £211,000. That works out at something like £1 15s. per cwt. imported. As Deputies have pointed out, wars have always brought prosperity to the fishing industry, yet as soon as the war is over this industry seems to slide back again into depression. That happened in the 1914-18 war and in the last war. I have given the pre-war average. In 1944, the imports were about 12,000 cwt.; in 1945, 9,000; in 1946, 18,000; in 1947, 18,000; in 1948, 18,000; in 1949, 21,200; in 1950, 23,260; in 1951, 38,000. That shows that our imports are increasing. Another interesting fact is that the 1951 imports work out at about £4 per cwt., as against £1 15s. pre-war, so we are importing more heavily as time goes on and as we get further away from the war.

What type of fish is that?

Fresh fish coming in every week. We felt that some new departure had to be undertaken to check this. I would like to correct Deputy Cowan's opinion—and I think it is the opinion of a very large number of people—that the waters around the Irish coast are teeming with fish. If there is anything I could say to disabuse the minds of the public of that erroneous idea, I think I should say it. We have some evidence, that in any event cannot be controverted, that that story is, unfortunately not true.

The French and Spanish fishermen come a long way, at that rate, to barren waters.

I have incontrovertible evidence of the truth of what I say. It is this. Two of the largest private enterprises in the country are going out of business, for the reason that the stocks of fish near our shores are becoming smaller and smaller year after year. If people who have been in the fishing industry for generations come along and get rid of their boats, the sort of boats they use for that purpose, for that reason, surely you cannot deny that there must be some truth in it?

With regard to the Frenchmen and Spaniards, they come around, but most of the time that we see them inside our three-mile limit they are coming in for shelter and harbourage. I saw them in the Aran Islands and I know they are off the south coast. We know that the Spaniards are coming over to our waters to fish the hake grounds which are 100 to 150 miles off the south coast. They had to do that after the war because of the acute shortage of food and this was the only food for them. If we want to make a claim that the hake grounds 100 miles off our coast are in Irish waters, I do not cavil at the statement in so far as it means that we are nearer to them than any other nation that is fishing them; but we have no legal claim to them any more than the Spaniards have.

The fact is that larger boats, therefore, are becoming necessary. That is not to say that the small boats that have been engaged and that still engage in seasonal fishing, such as lobster fishing, herring fishing, when the herrings come in shore, long lining, which was an old art, and salmon fishing in parts of the coast, have no further use. Small boats—33 and 35-feet engined boats—are economic units for that type of fishing but, when it comes to whole-time fishing for sea fish the problem has taken on a new character and we have to adapt ourselves accordingly.

There may be many matters that I have not touched upon with regard to sea fishing. With regard to inland fishing, I am afraid I have not much more to add to what I said in my opening statement.

With regard to Deputy McMenamin's complaint about the Foyle waters, I can assure him that the Foyle Commission is giving and will continue to give every attention to that question by seeing that because of the new régime down there the stocks of fish will not become depleted. I think, in fact, they have put on some recent restrictions to secure the objective that Deputy McMenamin has in mind.

With regard to Deputy Desmond's complaints about the palming off of grilse or peal as salmon, I do not know exactly what we can do about the matter. The Deputy seemed to suggest that we should bring the scientific knowledge of the Department to bear on this question by identifying fish as peal or as salmon. We have had this matter up before and I cannot give a categorical reply, one way or the other. In view of the very strong representations the Deputy has made, I will have the matter again brought to the notice of the Department because there is a double-edged complaint, which Deputy Desmond put very forcibly, that the fisherman is being deprived of higher prices when he is selling the fish and that the housewife has to pay higher prices when she is buying the fish. That would seem that a very unfair advantage was being taken both of the fisherman and the housewife and I will again have it brought to the notice of the Department.

Vote put and agreed to.
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