I am anxious to hear this debate as fully as possible. I was unavoidably absent during the first part and have read with great care the contributions made then and listened to the contributions made yesterday and the brief speech by Deputy Gallagher today.
There is common ground between us on certain key points, however much we may differ about procedure. The condition of the Irish fishing industry at this stage, in view of the extent of over-fishing in recent years, is totally unsatisfactory. The damage that has been done, some of it not readily retrievable in any short space of time, by over-fishing off our coast— normally outside the 12-mile limit where there has been occasional poaching — is on a very large scale. This is part of a general problem of over-fishing in many parts of the world, particularly in the North Atlantic, but I feel it is, in some respects, more acute in areas near our shore than it is elsewhere.
The damage done to an industry like ours, whose fishermen are inshore fishermen and have not the opportunity, because of the nature of their boats, craft, tradition and capital investment in the industry, to go afield to look for fish if their stocks near home are depleted, is exceptionally great. This industry should be recognised by everybody as being a natural part of the process of economic development of this the least developed part of the Community, except part of southern Italy. The fact that damage has been done to an industry which should be helping to lead our economic growth, but which has been instead prevented from making any real progress and has suffered a series of setbacks, is deplorable. The primary duty of the Government is to set this right.
There is no problem to which my Department have had to devote more time and attention. No problem has been more complex or more misunderstood. Some of the misunderstandings arise quite naturally from the extreme complexity of the issues and the way the issues have evolved. A number of them derive from persistent misrepresentation by the Opposition which goes, I think, beyond the appropriate role of an Opposition to probe, to press the Government, and to oppose them when they think they are wrong.
Much of the campaign that has been waged by the fishermen and their union, and part of the campaign by the Opposition, has been, in a sense, helpful in that it has begun to make clear to our partners in the Community the major issue this is at home. I am afraid the Opposition campaign has gone beyond that, and in one important respect has been damaging to the national interest. Their denigration of what was achieved on 30th October, undertaken for party political ends, has certainly helped to undermine confidence within the fishing industry and has led to a hesitation about investment which can be highly damaging to our interests. There is no moment at which this industry needs an injection of investment more than at present. We have the guarantee. The common fisheries policy has to be so adapted as to yield a doubling of our catch, if there are boats and men to catch the fish, within three years and expand further thereafter.
That guarantee in the ordinary way, if it had not been misrepresented and denigrated by the Opposition, would have led in ordinary circumstances to an injection of investment into the industry and a demand for new boats so that the process of building up to the doubling of the catch by 1979 would now be well under way. That is not happening in the way it should because the Opposition, instead of carrying out their proper role and helping to establish how vitally important this matter is, have gone far beyond that in attempting to damage the Government and damage my role and that of the Parliamentary Secretary in the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in a way which has proved a real disincentive to investment because it will mean that the benefits which should accrue from the implementation of a coastal band later this year have now been postponed seriously and one cannot ignore the danger that the fact that this has happened will make negotiation more difficult.
It has been difficult enough to persuade our partners we had a right at a time when they must cut back seriously in their fishing to be given the opportunity to expand our industry rapidly. We succeeded in doing that but, if it now appears that the opportunity provided is one of which advantage is not taken, and they will not go into the reasons, because of the effective Opposition propaganda on the morale of the fishing industry, then further negotiation becomes distinctly more difficult. The helpful aspect of opposition which at an earlier stage was a factor, if I may say so, can become a nefarious influence in the negotiations. I am seriously disturbed about this and about the prospects of the industry if the kind of uncertainty created, without any grounds whatever, should continue to undermine the position, prevent investment, delay expansion and weaken the prospects of getting maximum benefit from the industry. In this instance I believe the Opposition have gone beyond and against the national interest.
I come now to what seems to me to be the two main criticisms of the Government in this debate. I have read the parts of the debate that I missed and I listened carefully today and yesterday to the debate. It seems to me the criticisms fall under two headings. First, the Opposition contend we should have made a unilateral declaration of a 50-mile zone, that we have legal power to do so and by failing to exercise this legal power we have damaged the national interest and the fishing industry. The second and alternative argument would appear to be that whether or not we took that action we should not have joined in the declaration of the 200-mile zone at the time the other EEC countries did because, by doing so, we lost bargaining power. I think that is a fair summary of the arguments. I am not aware of any other arguments.
As far as the first argument is concerned, nothing could have been simpler, easier or more satisfying to the Government than simply at the outset to declare a 50-mile exclusive coastal band. The Government had the legal right to do so and it would have secured the applause of the Opposition, even though it might have been muted applause, the applause of the fishing industry and of the people generally. After that muted applause the Opposition could have basked in its laurels. One does not need to think much about the problem to realise that any Government that could have done that would have jumped at the opportunity and no Government would have been deterred from doing that except by compelling considerations.
Unfortunately, as I said before, the manner in which the Opposition when in Government acted and the timing of their action in 1970 meant there were no proper negotiations of our interests at the time the regulation was drawn up. I have checked again and, while the Commission's proposals on fisheries policy were known some months earlier, it was not until 21st September that the Opposition, then in Government, took the matter up in Brussels, exactly four weeks after the date the Council's decision was taken, at a stage so late that there was no possibility of any change being made in the wording which would have covered the case we have before us today. That inaction in marked contrast to the action of Norway, which took the matter up much earlier and more effectively, was commented upon by the Government of Norway publicly when they complained about the lack of support they got from the British as well as the Irish Governments of the day. It was that deplorable failure which contributed to the situation we are in now and no amount of falsification by the Opposition can hide that fact and no attempt, as has been made, to allege negligence on our part can alter the fact that from that moment onward our bargaining position was reduced to virtually nil and we have had to work from that basis onwards and make the best of the situation.
The legal situation, despite the convoluted arguments attempted by the Opposition, is unfortunately clear. On the advice available to me from several sources, the view of the Commission's legal services and the Council's legal services, all are unanimous on the point that unfortunately the regulation as adopted and now in force, and despite the derogation in time offered by the Accession Treaty, is of such a character that it precludes unilateral action and the declaration of an exclusive zone. It does not necessarily preclude another type of unilateral action of a different character in regard to conservation which I shall come to later on but it precludes the declaration of an exclusive zone. The Opposition know this because in fact they are responsible for it and assertions to the contrary carry no weight, even if they succeed in confusing the issue and confusing some of those engaged in the industry.
The problem the Government faced was would they attempt to pretend they had a legal power and purport to exercise it knowing that on the first occasion it sought to do so by intercepting a vessel of a Community country operating within 50 miles that decision would be challenged in our domestic courts and, under our domestic law and Community law, would be found to be null and void. We would then be faced with our bluff called and the unremitting hostility of those whom we had tried to bluff out of their legal rights. Was that the policy to pursue or was it better to face the facts, the heritage that Fianna Fáil had left to us, and proceed to try to negotiate ourselves out of the hole they had left us in?
The Government took the second view, and rightly, and decided we must seek to assert and prove objectively the need for a coastal band of up to 50 miles if the Irish fishing industry is to have a chance of developing. That was the policy pursued. The attempt to throw dust in the eyes of the public will not succeed. The public will not be taken in by it.
The second argument is that we should not have declared a 200-mile zone. I have tried to follow this argument. I have tried to discover the rationale of the Fianna Fáil suggestion. It is not clear. I have carefully read the debate and listened to what speakers said but that has not left me with any clearer picture of what bargaining power the Opposition think this would have given us. It is clear enough what disadvantages there would be in not declaring this 200-mile zone. Had we not declared it, it would certainly have been extremely disruptive of Community solidarity, offensive to our partners and, to say the least, would have caused great irritation on their part. The question is would it have injured their interests to such an extent that they would have been forced by such a threat on our part to make a major concession with regard to a coastal band at that time. Nothing said on the Opposition benches suggest to me that they think this is the case, nor have they indicated why they think it is the case.
The declaration of the 200-mile zone has two effects. First, it has the right to exclude countries outside the Community from fishing. It is in the general Community interest that we exclude these countries from our part of the 200-mile zone as well as from theirs because it keeps more fish around Community coasts. But their hearts would not break if we postponed that declaration and permitted other countries to continue to fish for a period in our area.
The other purpose of obtaining the 200-mile zone is to enable the Community to enter into bargains with countries controlling waters within their new 200-mile zones in which Community countries have hitherto fished so that, for example, countries like Britain and Germany can benefit from a reciprocal arrangement with Norway, Iceland or the Faroes under which by offering the possibility to those countries of continuing to catch certain kinds of fish in the Community 200-mile zone or some parts of it, they could secure in return the right to catch fish in the 200-mile zone of Iceland, Norway, the Faroes or the Soviet Union. For the purpose of that second objective of the 200-mile zone, the Irish non-declaration of it would have been ineffective in preventing this. Of the four countries I mentioned, which are the ones with whom reciprocal agreements either are under negotiation, are being attempted or could be attempted because there is a reciprocity of catch, with the single and limited exception of the Soviet Union, none fishes to a significant extent in our waters. Therefore, the basis for the bargaining required by the Community countries in order to secure their interests in Norwegian, Faroese or Icelandic waters is to be found in the declaration by the other member countries of 200-mile zones. Our failure to declare ours and therefore the absence of a possible bargaining counter for them in these negotiations is of no importance because these three countries do not catch fish in our waters, and the bargain to be made between the Community and these countries of a reciprocal nature would be in no way impeded or rendered less efficacious had we held back from declaring a 200-mile zone.
Therefore, had we decided not to join with our Community partners this would not have embarrassed them in any significant way. It would have annoyed them and would have destroyed Community solidarity. It would have weakened the moral validity of our case. It would have damaged our interests but it would not have put any pressure on them, unfortunately. I wish it would. It would have damaged our interests, however, very severely. Had the Opposition policy been adopted Soviet vessels would be continuing to fish within 12 miles of our coast today on a scale immensely damaging to our fishing. Moreover, had we adopted their policy it would not be open to the Government, either by common accord within the Community or by unilateral declaration, to seek to impose conservation measures outside 12 miles which are badly needed. What the Opposition are proposing, therefore, is that we should have refrained from declaring a 200-mile zone which is vitally important to the national interests, to exclude eastern European vessels from 12 miles off our coast, vitally important to enable us to take, either in conjunction with our partners or unilaterally, conservation measures. If we were to do this because it would give only a mythical bargaining power, our Community partners would not find themselves in any way at a serious disadvantage for the absence of our 200-mile zone. That argument falls to the ground completely and is self-evidently fallacious.
We are left with the reality of the situation we find ourselves in because of what Fianna Fáil did not do in 1970, the dog that did not bark in the night in June, July and August of 1970 or before 21st September. What we have done has been to use the first stage of our possible threat of veto on reciprocal agreements with other countries to secure concessions for this country of vital importance in themselves but also concessions which lay the objective groundwork for achieving our demand for a coastal band, a demand which without that objective groundwork is simply a unilateral assertion of something we would like to have.
The concessions we secured on 30th October included an agreement in principle that we should not have to bear the full burden of protection costs in our very large share of the Community waters; the Community would help us in that regard. Secondly, there was the recognition that Ireland is a special case different from all other Community countries as far as fishing is concerned, different in particular from Britain and Scotland. Thirdly, we secured acceptance of the principle that the Irish fishing industry must develop when all other fishing industries in the Community are held back for conservation reasons and must develop at a rate to enable it to double its catch in three years and must have the right to develop further thereafter. Those, despite any denigration by the Opposition here, were vitally important gains, not only intrinsically in themselves at that time, but also because the provision with regard to the quantitative growth of the industry provides the objective basis for a claim to a coastal band. Why? It can be shown arithmetically without much difficulty at this stage of affairs after the depletion of stocks in the North Atlantic and off our coasts that the total volume of fish available to us near our coasts is of such a magnitude that we are going to need effectively all the fish near our coasts and the great bulk of the fish somewhat further out in order to achieve the target which we have had endorsed by the Community. We can now say to them that they are committed by a binding obligation so to apply a common fishery policy as to enable the Irish fishing industry to develop in accordance with the Government's development plan and to develop progressively and continuously beyond that date. But we could not say to them before we got that agreement that we were asserting a 50-mile band claim when we had no basis for it. We can say to them: "There is no way in which you can put forward a proposition that we can achieve that without any coastal band, because the volume of fish stocks near our coasts is such that unless we get a coastal band we could not achieve that target and you are committed to our achieving that target". We now have a firm quantitative basis for the claim to a coastal band and that is a crucial achievement and it places our bargaining position on a firm foundation for the first time which it did not stand on previously although we were nobly making the assertion that we wanted this band. Those achievements, denigrated by the Opposition, provide a firm basis for the negotiation to come.
What has unfortunately confused the position, or helped the Opposition to do so, is that in the period since 30th October the Community has become bogged down in a wrangle about the interim arrangements for fishing between that time, now, and when the permanent regime to be negotiated comes into effect, a wrangle which in its complexity, legally and politically, rivals any type of international dispute or argument I have ever heard about and the Byzantine complexities of which we have been trying to unravel as rapidly as possible in our interest. There has been the problem of the interim arrangement in respect of other countries where there are reciprocal fishing interests and the Commission is endeavouring to negotiate with Norway, Iceland and the Faroes. This is complex enough. Then there is the problem of the exclusion, after a very short and rapid phasing-out period, of eastern European vessels, something which is basically satisfactory to us. It involved a very substantial cut-back to a fraction of previous catch by these vessels in the three-month period. It involved the whole of this very reduced catch being secured as far as we are concerned over 50 miles from our coasts so that none of these vessels may come within 50 miles of our coasts.
These are very important concessions indeed, helping to preserve what is left of the fish around our shores. These arrangements had been based on quotas not backed up by anything but quota arrangements, quotas to be respected by a nonCommunity country over whose affairs we have little control. There is evidence that this quota system did not work and, as has been said in this debate, in an imprecise form the British reported that in 17 days the Soviet Union had in parts of the North Sea caught more than their quota of sprat already for the three-month period. As a result negotiations proceeded for a licensing system to licence a small number of boats in different parts of Community waters. That has now been agreed after considerable difficulties about the wording of it where we had to safeguard our national interests and at one stage we had to hold up the whole negotiations while what we regarded as our vital national interests were safeguarded.
That is only part of this interim affair. The other part is the working out of interim conservation arrangements to try to preserve what fish is left while we engage in negotiation for the coastal band during the rest of this year. That has proved a difficult and intractable matter. We are quite clear that no quota system, never mind a quota reduction of only 10 per cent, could be in any way adequate to preserve our stocks from over-fishing by Community boats even with the departure of Eastern Europeans during the course of the present year. We are not prepared to accept that a quota system of dubious effectiveness involving a cut of only 10 per cent should be the only measure of conservation. We have indicated the measures we would like to take and we have pressed these measures. Had there been total resistance to them and evidence that no circumstances could measure along these lines we proposed be accepted, we would have acted unilaterally in December or in January. There was a measure of good-will towards our position.
Proposals were made which went some way to meet our position. I am not satisfied with these proposals, and I am not satisfied that these proposals have been, can be or will be amended to meet our needs but it would have been damaging to our interest to refuse to negotiate and discuss these proposals and to insist that on the deadline of 31st December we take unilateral conservation measures regardless of whether there was a willingness to discuss the problem by our partners. It may well be that next Tuesday we may fail to reach agreement and have to take unilateral action. On the other hand, we may find people in a reasonable frame of mind where they will agree to the measures that we need to take to conserve our fish stocks in which event we will be happy to do by general agreement what we are willing to do unilaterally if we do not get general agreement. That debate has continued through December and January and it has had the disadvantage that it has held up the start of the negotiation of the permanent regime and the coastal band. People who have not followed this extremely complex negotiation closely have felt that the coastal band has been lost somewhere. In fact, it is the crucial issue yet to be negotiated on which we have conceded nothing and for which we have secured a firm basis in the agreement of October 30th by the doubling of our catch within three years.
Our job is to get this conservation arrangement sorted out one way or the other so that in addition to the pushing out of the Eastern European vessels from our shores there will be a substantial reduction in Community fishing off our coasts and adequate conservation and preservation of our fish stocks during this year because we cannot afford that they be further depleted while these countries engage in long negotiations over our coastal band claim. The conservation measures that we need to take are quite extensive. They can cover a range of matters in relation to the size of nets, the size of boats, and in relation to closing off areas of fishing.
We are not wedded to a particular individual solution. We made our proposals but if we can get something substantially like them, better in some respects and less good in others, but giving the same result overall, we will accept it, but if not we will take the necessary unilateral action which will be non-discriminatory in character and, therefore, unlike the Opposition's idea of an exclusive coastal band, legal within Community law, as established by case law and as evidenced under the terms of the Community Acts in question and by the whole way in which Community law operates. I hope that by next Tuesday we will have settled this interim issue of conservation one way or the other satisfactorily to Ireland so that from then on we can concentrate on the real battle for the coastal band which must be the primary objective.
I do not see any way and nobody has suggested any way by which our vital interests in this matter can be preserved except by an exclusive coastal band of up to 50 miles. Provision could be made for traditional fishermen, small boats from nearby countries, who have fished for centuries in our waters, within limits, and on a basis which will not impede our conservation efforts or produce a slowdown in the expansion of our domestic industry. There must be a band which we control where we can be sure that its method of operation is such as to produce these results in terms of expansion of our industry and in terms of conservation. That is the object of our policy and we will not be deflected from it by any attempts from the other side of the House to obscure the issue.
Responsible opposition cannot conceivably allege that it is helping the national interest by making accusations against a Minister of the kind made by Deputy Molloy last night. Deputy Gallagher who spoke immediately afterwards started by saying that he agreed with the previous speaker. In the Deputy's interest I had to suggest to him that he could not have agreed with the allegations made by Deputy Molloy, that I was deliberately sabotaging the Irish national interest with a view to feathering my nest by a job in Brussels. I find it unbelievable that such an allegation could be made from the front bench. Deputy Gallagher did nothing to maintain the honour of his party by repudiating the allegation. If the Opposition Party Leader had been here he would have repudiated the allegation and he would be very slow to return a Deputy like Deputy Molloy who makes remarks like that to his front bench.
