This Bill does not present any great difficulty. It merely postpones the election of members of boards of conservators. I trust the Parliamentary Secretary has in mind a more democratic system of election to these boards. A delay of one year will not make a great difference. We have lived with this system since 1848 and one year of waiting for a better system will not affect us very greatly.
I have been looking through the Fisheries (Consolidation) Act, 1959. Its powers and extent are extraordinary. I could not overemphasise the manner in which our fishing industry has been neglected during the years. It is the public who are to blame when we get gross neglect of a natural resource. In no other field has a natural resource been more neglected than in the case of our fisheries. In recent times when we got an inkling that there might be major mineral deposits of oil and other raw materials off our coasts and in our lands, there was a human cry from the public about taking these wealth sources over and developing them for the good of the country.
What have those people been doing over the years? What excuse is there for their indifference, and absolute ignorance in many cases, with regard to our fishing industry potential? There would never have been a need for people to emigrate from this country if the fishing industry had been developed along proper lines. It is probably one of the greatest indictments of the native Irishman's inability to invest in, organise and develop an industry which is on our very doorstep.
That may have been. What best can we do from now on? I would implore the Government as a whole, and the Parliamentary Secretary, to take another look at this major source of wealth. Year after year we watch fleets of ships—we could not call them trawlers—swarming around our coasts but we have been barely able to keep them out. Most of the time we are not. The poaching and devastation which takes place is beyond the comprehension of those who have not seen it. This exploitation has not really affected our salmon industry to any great extent, but I am afraid that it will in the near future.
In an endeavour to plan and develop our fisheries—something which should have been done years ago—I would advocate that we have a separate Ministry for Fisheries. Being tied to a Ministry such as Agriculture, which is our primary industry, fisheries naturally suffer, being the poor relation. I can think of other Ministries which deserve a lesser rating than fisheries. So many different Departments, at the moment, are involved in fishery matters that the solution to a particular problem could elude one for a considerable time.
The Department of Transport and Power, for instance, own everything up to the high water mark. The Department of Foreign Affairs negotiate our fishery limits. The Department of Industry and Commerce are responsible for all exploration of any minerals that may be on the sea bed. The Department of Defence and the Department of Justice are responsible for the defence of our fishery limits and for the apprehension of people who violate them. It would be far more logical to have a Department dealing with fisheries alone which could be called the Department for Maritime Affairs. This has never become more apparent than in recent times when we seem to have great mineral wealth at our disposal.
In each county in the country there are committees of agriculture and there is the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. No thought is given to the development of fisheries on a regional or county basis. This goes back to what I mentioned originally, indifference and neglect. We need a specific Department to look after fisheries. I do not believe, with the limited manpower in the fisheries section of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, that we can do justice to this industry which, I believe, is our third greatest industry. One would never imagine this from the manner in which it has been operated over the years.
The boards of conservators, with which this Bill deals, have come in for considerable criticism in the last few years especially in conjunction with the Salmon (Amendment) Acts which govern the restriction of licences. The conservators are a group of men who have done tremendous work on a voluntary basis. The method of their election is not satisfactory. It is undemocratic that people could have several votes on a board merely because they have a certain valuation. It is an archaic and futile system. I do not agree with the system of election but conservators by and large have been excellent public citizens and have served this country very well. They operate and attend meetings without getting expenses. I know of conservators, working-class people, salmon fishermen with no other means of livelihood, who have to travel 50 or 60 miles without any expenses to attend meetings. This is unfair. These meetings were not so frequent up to the last two years when the controversy over the licences arose. I believe that from now on they will be held once every month. I think the Parliamentary Secretary should look into the matter of paying these people expenses. They are doing a good public service and should be properly compensated for the lost time which they incur.
Conservators have been given a most unsavoury task in recent years. They have been asked to adjudicate on the issuing of salmon licences—a most unpopular thing when it comes to restricting the numbers. Some of their friends have had to be denied licences because they did not come within the limits prescribed. It would probably have been wiser to set up an investigating board and to allocate these licences after a thorough examination. The conservators were not in a position to examine the credentials of each individual applicant. They have had to withstand a certain amount of abuse and misrepresentation on this matter.
The employees of the conservation boards, that is the waterkeepers, badly need to have their conditions of employment improved. Waterkeepers, or bailiffs as they may also be known, are temporary employees, not permanent employees of any board or any Government Department. They are paid a very low wage. They have a most dangerous job without the standing of the Garda Siochána and are constantly in danger. Much of their work deals with apprehension of people poaching at dangerous hours of the night and in dangerous places such as the banks of rivers and quite often they are outnumbered. They have a most unsatisfactory working arrangement. They have been most loyal employees. For what they have been paid they have done tremendous work. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to look into their conditions of employment and give them favourable consideration. The expenses they get for travelling throughout a fishery area would astound the public if they knew what they were: it is a fraction of a penny per mile.
Their jobs in recent years have been expanded out of all proportion. Only in the past four or five years is there such a thing as salmon fishing at sea in the vast majority of areas in this country. Previously their activities were confined to the rivers; now they have got to patrol the coastal areas and have to go to sea and examine the nets and boats. The area and volume of their work has considerably increased. Their numbers have not increased nor has their remuneration, to any great extent. It is time that they got a fair deal. Quite often their work is wasted because we have a number—a small number, admittedly—of district justices who will not deal fittingly with people who are caught poaching. There is a discrepancy in the manner in which poaching offences are dealt with in the courts. Some district justices quite rightly impose stiff sentences: others treat the whole thing as a bit of a joke. People who have been repeatedly caught poaching are let go scot-free or almost scot-free. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to bear this in mind. I have spoken to some of these waterkeepers and they feel very aggrieved when, after their endless detection work and nights of waiting, poachers are so leniently treated when brought to the courts.
The Parliamentary Secretary brought in a restriction on the hours for fishing in certain private fisheries earlier this year. This would seem to be a just type of conservation if the fisheries were operated solely by large, wealthy owners who are making a stupendous profit. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The river Blackwater is such a fishery: it is a private fishery. The owners are extremely generous in the manner in which they allow the traditional fishermen to work-this fishery. They may pay a rental of £12 per annum and they have got the same rights as drift net and draft net fishermen in the public fisheries. These people feel aggrieved that their livelihood has been affected by the restrictions.
Previously, all fishermen could fish from 6 a.m. on Monday morning to 6 a.m. the following Saturday morning. Now they have been restricted to 1 p.m. on Monday—that is seven hours less— to 6 a.m. on the following Saturday morning. Seven hours in fishing terms can be quite considerable. This penalty or conservation clause does not apply in the outer fisheries—that is the public, open sea fisheries and in the public rivers. The fishermen on private fisheries such as the Blackwater are quite willing to forego the seven hours which are at present being taken from them in order to give fish a chance of going up the rivers. They are willing to cut back their fishing from 6 a.m. on Saturday mornings until 11 p.m. on Friday nights if they get the concession to have the 1 o'clock limit on Monday afternoons put back to 6 a.m. on Monday mornings. They do not want any extension of hours, all they want is a simple transfer of hours because the Monday morning period is a particularly good time for fishing. It is hard enough for these men as things stand. River fishermen cannot fish 24 hours a day: they can only fish while the tide is rising and while the tide is falling. That means that the maximum time for which they can fish is eight hours. These are drift net men in the region of Youghal Harbour, Clashmore and Villierstown. Further up the river towards Cappoquin in the Villierstown-Cappoquin area where we have draft nets and snap nets these people are more severely handicapped because they can only fish on a falling tide. That restricts their hours of fishing to four hours per day. We have this discrepancy where the people who can only fish during restricted periods have had their hours of fishing cut while those in the public fisheries have not been affected: they can fish continuously for 24 hours a day on five days a week. The result is that people in the private fisheries in the areas I have mentioned are suffering considerable financial losses. I do not see that the conservation is being entirely consistent when the people at the mouth of the harbour can fish during the hours when people up the river are prohibited from fishing. I should like to see this condition removed when ordinary individuals are trying to make a living. I would not object if the people concerned were employed on a fixed rate per week by the owners of the fishery, but they are not: they are dependent almost entirely in most cases, and entirely in other cases, on their actual catches. The hours should revert to what they were in this type of private fishery, or else the fishermen should be given the option of taking the seven hours off Friday night/Saturday morning and having Monday morning. This is what they want and it amounts to the same thing in terms of hours. They do not want anything extra; they just want the same number of hours at a slightly more convenient time.
We have also been considering the question of the length of nets. Most fishermen would agree with the limits that have been imposed but there is a grievance with regard to the depth of net. Traditionally it was the custom to fish 30 meshes deep but more recently it has become the custom in certain areas to fish 60 meshes. Traditional fishermen, who fish 30 meshes, particularly in the rivers, are a bit disappointed that the depth of net has not been governed by the new regulations. They feel at a great disadvantage when people out at sea may fish 60 meshes deep, which gives them a considerable advantage over the river men. The Parliamentary Secretary might look into this.
There seems to be great laxity as regards enforcing the laws of conservation in bays and inlets. Large boats are able to trawl and to come right in to the shore and fish, cleaning out whole areas many of which are spawning beds. The smaller men feel aggrieved over this. They believe that these areas should be conserved. The law is there to conserve such spawning beds and spawning bays but I have never once seen a person brought to court for trawling or destroying spawning beds. The laws are not being applied as they should be, and great damage is being done. Perhaps some of the people who are shouting about conservation should look at that aspect of it. The only time conservation is raised is when people are seen to catch too many fish. The conservation of fishing stocks was never really raised until the drift men started making good catches a few years ago. Think of the basic conservation—the breeding grounds. These are not being guarded properly in the bays.
Some time ago Senator Dolan praised the vocational committees for running cookery classes and for providing facilities for teaching children how to cook fish. I am afraid I am not impressed. My tastes are pretty typical. The presentation and cooking of fish does not come within this Bill, but much of our fishery ills are due to the fact that our fish are not presented and cooked in a manner which gives the people any great love for fish. This might be one of our basic failings. We have a natural dislike for and are accustomed to being dished up with half-cooked or burnt fish. Bord Iascaigh Mhara might launch a campaign to present fish meals in a more attractive and delectable manner. It is amazing how the Continentals can present these dishes but we seem to be totally unable to do so. It might be a major public relations operation if this were done. I am referring specifically to shellfish——
