Deputy Andrews gave me notice of his intention to raise on the Adjournment the subject matter of Question No. 23 which appeared on today's Order Paper.
Death of a Member. - Adjournment Debate: Fish Virus.
I sought to raise the subject matter of Question No. 4 but the Chair in its wisdom decided that the question could properly be dealt with on Thursday next when the Estimate for the Department of Health comes for discussion before the Dáil. Question No. 4 was in connection with the claim for parity of rates by the limb-fitting department of the National Medical Rehabilitation Centre at Dún Laoghaire.
My concern for bringing this current issue to the attention of the Dáil was prompted by an article I read in The Sunday Times, having already read some similar literature six months previously. I brought this to the attention of the Dáil because I believe it to be a serious matter. It refers to the fresh fish and course fishing disease of IPN or infectious pancreatic necrosis. It is a disease which I believe will become as insidious as the salmon disease, which was one of the most shocking attacks ever on fresh water fish in this country, or indeed any other country in the world. The salmon disease was a tragedy. It was an attack on our stocks, which were available to tourists coming to this country, who were undoubtedly paying money to fish them.
The fish I am talking about are more democratic fish in the sense that they are more easily accessible in lakes under the control of the Inland Fisheries Trust. This gives me an opportunity to pay tribute to the wonderful work being done by them in the rivers and lakes under their charge. I call this democratically accessible fishing because we know that the annual subscription to the Inland Fisheries Trust is only £2 so it does not preclude anybody from fishing the fish under discussion this evening. The article in The Sunday Times of the 4th April, 1976, states:
Anglers, whose sport is just recovering from the worst salmon disease in history, are watching with morbid fascination the career of a virus which has begun to kill trout fry by the million in East Anglia.
Their interest—and the interests of biologists—centres on three things: the threat that the virus poses to trout fishing in the short term; the fears of what it conceivably could do to the vast coarse fisheries of the Midlands in the medium term; and the fact that the way it has been allowed to spread provides a chilling comment on our ability to contain the even worse fish diseases which are queuing up on the other side of the Channel.
The effect of IPN is then described. The article continues:
IPN does not affect adult fish but is carried by them. Adults of both sexes shed virus particles into the water; and hen fish pass them on in the membrances of the eggs they spawn. The fry are then killed by the virus before they can mature.
The Parliamentary Secretary, in reply to me this afternoon, dismissed my question in the most casual fashion. He stated that he had seen the newspaper report brought to his attention by me. His reply stated:
I have seen the newspaper report referred to by the Deputy. The virus in question has been detected at times in a mild form in fish farms and hatcheries in this country but does not present a serious problem. It has not been detected in our wild fish. My Department are constantly on their guard against the introduction or spread of fish diseases. Fish farms and hatcheries are screened twice yearly and live fish and ova can be imported only under licence. Such licences are not granted unless the importation is being made from a disease free area.
The Parliamentary Secretary says that the fish farms are inspected twice yearly so the inspector goes along to them every six months, but what happens in the intervening time? When does the mild disease become a major disease? When does the mild disease cease to be mild? What happens if the mild disease does not go away and becomes a major threat to one of the most important arms in our tourist industry? One of the great attractions of this country to people from abroad, the Continent of Europe in particular, is coarse fishing and fresh water trout fishing.
I believe that for the first time the Department have officially recognised, because of the vigilance of the Opposition, the official existence of IPN, infectious pancreatic necrosis, but the Department have decided it exists in only mild form and that it does not present any threat. I pursued the Parliamentary Secretary today by way of supplementary question. I went to the official unrevised report but I suspect somebody, else got to the report before me in the Editor's Office and did a little bit of articulation in the Parliamentary Secretary's replies because certainly the replies I see here bear very little resemblance, as I understood it, to the replies the Parliamentary Secretary gave in the Dáil this afternoon.
That is not so.
That may be. Perhaps I was not alert enough because I understood the Parliamentary Secretary made a number of references which do not appear in the Official Report.
I am not responsible for the Official Report.
I am not suggesting any untoward lack of vigilance by the shorthand notetakers whose work here has been great in the extreme. The charge is directed to another area which the Parliamentary Secretary may or may not know about. The Parliamentary Secretary stated this afternoon, in reply to my Supplementary Question:
As I indicated in my reply all farms and hatcheries are screened twice yearly. It is fortunate that affected fish are not found in any of our rivers or streams. That seems to be a peculiarity but it is the report from our biologists that affected fish are not to be found in any of our rivers or streams.
I totally reject that. It is the Parliamentary Secretary's definition that the disease is a mild form. I do not accept it is a mild form. I believe if it exists at all it is a major threat to fishing in the country and now is the time to come to grips with it. The suggestion that because it is contained in fish farms, which is in that reply, it does not percolate into our fresh water rivers is totally untrue. The Parliamentary Secretary knows that as well as I do from his experience of going around fish farms.
I am very interested in fish farms and fishing generally. I had the opportunity over Easter to look at a very well stocked fish farm. The one I have in mind has a river running at the back of it. It is well known that fish escape from this fish farm, despite the wonderful vigilance of the people that own it, into this fresh water river. Young boys on the far side of the bank with their rods and lines fish for fish which escape from that fish farm. If this disease exists in those fish farms the Parliamentary Secretary cannot come along to the Dáil and say that the fish do not escape into the rivers. Of course they do. These are the lower reaches of the rivers. The Parliamentary Secretary knows as well as I do that brown trout, in particular, exist in fresh water lakes and the upper reaches of rivers. That is a naturally ascertainable fact. If those fish are not caught by the people on the far side of river banks outside the jurisdiction of the hatcheries then the possibility is that those fish can make their way up the upper reaches of the rivers and down through lakes and spread this insidious disease.
The Parliamentary Secretary has given a rather casual reply to a question which was intended most seriously. Then he talks about endeavouring to eliminate disease and says that fortunately it is not too significant here. It is not too significant yet. Could he tell the Dáil what he is doing to eliminate the disease? "We are taking all steps necessary to ensure that it will not increase and if at all possible that it will be eliminated". Would the Parliamentary Secretary tell us what steps are being taken? "Fortunately, as a result of such precautions—" what precautions? "—we are in a much more favourable position than other countries so far as this disease is concerned." I then asked: "On the basis that it is a major problem in Britain and that trout and coarse fishing is a significant tourist attraction here, will the Parliamentary Secretary urge his departmental officials to go to the United Kingdom to examine the problem and to ensure that it does not become a major problem here which would constitute a major attack on our trout and coarse fishing?" The Parliamentary Secretary replied: "It is not necessary for departmental advisers to travel to Britain in search of additional information since they have as much information at their disposal as their British counterparts. Consequently, I would not authorise unnecessary expenditure."
Again, I reject the suggestion that the Parliamentary Secretary's advisers have as much information available to them as their British counterparts because the British have the guts to admit that this disease is a major threat to coarse fishing in their country. Here, the Parliamentary Secretary comes in and misrepresents the situation stating that the disease is only a mild threat here. Would he not consider that it would be worth spending £100 or £150 to send an adviser from his Department to see it existing in its major form as a threat to trout and coarse fishing in Britain? That would not be excessive expenditure. If the Parliamentary Secretary cannot find it in his heart to search for a solution where this disease exists in major form and in the experience of people who are trying to contain it there, would he accept it if a number of trout angling associations came to the rescue of a bankrupt Government and supplied the money to send an official adviser to Britain? This is a real offer and if the Parliamentary Secretary wishes to take it up in his reply I should be glad to make the necessary arrangements.
The Parliamentary Secretary does not really believe that if the disease exists in a mild form, as he says, it may escalate and become a major problem. He knows the effect disease had on our salmon stock and the disaster it meant in the case of Irishmen who were making a good livelihood out of salmon fishing, apart from the attraction this fishing may have for tourists from at home or abroad. There are Irishmen who are concerned about fresh water fishing stocks. They consider fishing in lakes and rivers to be a reasonable form of sport apart from its therapeutic effects. I strongly urge the Parliamentary Secretary to take the matter seriously and institute a thorough rather than a haphazard examination of the problem. Because I have raised the matter in the Dáil this evening I am prevented from bringing it to the notice of the House for six months more but it is my intention to do so when that time has elapsed. Rules of order prevent me from repeating a question within a six months period.
I believe that tourism and trout and coarse fishing are synonymous. Tremendous work has been done by the Inland Fisheries Trust and other voluntary organisations in preserving fish stocks and it is a great credit to them that they have succeeded in this in the face of one of the greatest modern challenges—in addition, possibly to the disease I am discussing—pollution. Over the years we have not seen fit to admit and tackle a condition in our lakes known as pollution. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will take my remarks seriously. I shall finish by quoting again from the article in The Sunday Times of 4th April, which says:
Should current research show that IPN could kill coarse fry—or if some virus with a more catholic taste than trout were piggy-backed about the country in this way—larger schemes which eventually the impact could deal coarse fishing a blow from which it would take decades to recover.
The penultimate paragraph says:
If more fish farms were to be infected, bans on fish movements would also become more widespread; and the effect would be that the waters in which anglers fish would be starved of trout. More immediately still, there are now real fears for the remaining native brown trout which breed naturally in the upper reaches of most of the rivers affected.
That confirms what I said about brown trout in their natural state, that these breed better in the upper reaches of rivers.
For both fishermen and biologists however the most chilling aspect of the IPN affair remains the way the virus before its discovery has been moved about the country by man himself helping to achieve in hours what nature on her own might never have achieved in a year.
It is a chilling article. It shows the incapability of man to recognise in time a threat to one of the great natural resources. My reason for bringing the matter before the House was to ask the Parliamentary Secretary if he considers that since the IPN disease exists at present in mild form there is a real possibility that it may emerge in major form in the not too distant future if proper precautions are not taken. I do not accept that proper precautions are being taken having regard to the reply to my question. "The virus in question has been detected at times in a mild form in fish farms and hatcheries in this country but does not present a serious problem." At present it does not, but it may. "It has not been detected in our wild fish." The Parliamentary Secretary might have added "yet". What happens if it is detected in wild fish? "My Department is constantly on its guard against the introduction or spread of fish disease." I am sure it is; nobody suggests otherwise, but will the Parliamentary Secretary tell the Dáil and the many thousands of Irish men and women who participate in this form of sport, what real action is being taken? A vague reply is not sufficient.
A question should not be raised on the Adjournment in a flippant manner but if a matter is considered to be of a serious nature then it should be raised and that is why I consider the Parliamentary Secretary's reply to my question was casual in the extreme. I ask him to consider my point of view and deal with it in a serious, reasonable and responsible fashion.
In a reasonable, responsible manner—this apparently is the complaint of Deputy Andrews, that his question was not dealt with in a reasonable, serious and responsible manner. The Deputy knows very well that is not factual. Any question relating to fish disease is dealt with seriously by the Department, as are all other questions. I gave the Deputy a factual appraisal of the position in my initial reply today. I gave him further details in the supplementaries which I thought would be useful to him and to the House. Deputy Andrews does not seem to be satisfied with the notetakers attached to this House.
It has nothing to do with the notetakers.
Such a charge is rarely made.
Order.
One would get the impression that Deputy Andrews is not too satisfied that the disease is not with us in a more significant way. Earlier today I said that it was fortunate that affected fish are not found in any of our rivers or streams. That is a statement of fact given to me by my departmental advisers. Long before this article was written in The Sunday Times and long before this question was raised, my Department gave diligent attention to the question of fish diseases. Since Deputy Andrews has put to me that my Department are not diligent in regard to the prevention of fish diseases, let me say here and now that we have a fully equipped fish pathology unit, second to none in Europe, and I am quite satisfied that the information given to me is correct. These people have worked very hard and are most diligent in ensuring that IPN and many other fish diseases are reduced to a minimum in our rivers, streams and fish farms. It is due to their observance that IPN is not too significant. It is difficult to eliminate it entirely and we have it only in a moderate form, thanks to the fish pathologists and scientific advisers attached to the Department. I am quite satisfied that their work in this field leaves nothing to be desired. I have a great deal of technical information——
The Parliamentary Secretary can give me this information later.
Mr. Murphy
Since I became Parliamentary Secretary I have always facilitated any Deputies who have approached me for information and I do not appreciate the raising of this matter on the Adjournment by Deputy Andrews. Of course, he is quite entitled to do so, but he is trying to highlight something that does not exist.
Order please. Deputy Andrews had a good hearing. Will he please give the same respectful hearing to the Parliamentary Secretary?
By implication Deputy Andrews reflected on the departmental officers in his concluding supplementary and he repeated that reflection in the course of his remarks here this evening when he said that we should send these people to the UK to get some up-to-date information on the prevention of IPN. The implication was that our departmental advisers were not capable of dealing with IPN and other fish diseases. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am glad to say we have many exchanges with our British counterparts. We do not have to go to Britain for these exchanges because the British officials visit us frequently. Therefore I do not want to accept Deputy Andrews's generous offer to get someone to pay their expenses to go to England. If there is any necessity for our officers to attend conferences they have full freedom of movement to do so to update their knowledge of the eradication of fish diseases. There are exchanges of views. These exchanges take place frequently. My knowledge of the Department's officers is that their information is as good as, if not better than, their counterparts in Europe. Whenever our officers hear of IPN or any other diseases—I think there are eight major fish diseases—they deal with them as quickly as possible.
In so far as our fish farms are concerned I should like to voice my appreciation of their co-operation with the Department's officers. Our importation measures are extremely rigid. We regard this island as a unit and we do import from the North more so than from any other place. We import fish fry from Northern Ireland, but the chief pathologist must certify that they are free from IPN and all other diseases, and this has been the position for a period of two years.
I am sorry to interrupt the Parliamentary Secretary, but the time allotted to this debate is just about exhausted.
I can assure Deputy Andrews that all necessary steps are being taken and will continue to be taken by this Department to ensure that IPN or any other disease will be reduced to a minimum or eradicated, if at all possible.
The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 28th April, 1976.