The most remarkable point in this Bill is that the Minister for Fisheries has adopted the method for management which was recommended to him by a Commission which sat ten years ago. These recommendations made by that Commission the Minister steadily refused to put into operation. He continually opposed them. Now, however, after all that lapse of time he reverts to these recommendations. I would just like to read a few lines from the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the resources of Ireland. That Commission was assembled about 1920. It states various considerations and then it goes on to say:—
"These considerations are the more important, as the present system has now failed at every stage and the faults of that system are clearly exposed. The capture of fish has not been encouraged; the fisherman has not been given a decent livelihood, the consumer has not been provided with regular supplies, and, in Ireland, he has not been provided in many places with a supply at all. Nor is it possible to rectify any of these faults—that is, the failure to encourage the capture of fish to give the fishermen a decent livelihood or to provide the consumer with regular supplies or any supplies by any revision or extension of the present system. Most of the faults of the present system are inherent in it and are too firmly fixed in practice."
I will not go any further with this extract, but just to point out that the argument stated there is in favour of the Bill as it now stands. That Bill is totally opposite to the whole management of the fisheries during the last ten years. For ten years the Minister has continued the same practice that was condemned in the report of the Commission of Inquiry. At the end of ten years the Minister suddenly finds that he ought all that time have carried out the recommendations in the report, and that he should have done all the things based on the recommendations of that report. There are several Senators here who were on that Commission. Most of the recommendations were due to Senator Johnson, but there are other Senators who were on the Commission and who will back up what I say. The Minister, however, preferred to continue in the old system which was condemned, and he has notoriously failed in his work. Even the "Independent" newspaper, which generally backs his Party, has condemned him again and again every year for the way in which——