I will make a short contribution on this, a kind rather different from that made by anyone else in so far as I want to if I can, understand the structure of this whole affair. We have the Fishery Harbour Centres Act, 1968, which scheduled five harbours in relation to which fishery harbour centre orders may be made. This amending Bill really contains only two modest amendments to that Act by providing for a more appropriate fine than £100 for any offence that might be committed. That in fact keeps in line with inflation. The other is to replace Galway as a harbour in relation to which a fishery harbour centre order might be made and to substitute another harbour Rossaveal, which is in County Galway also. There does not seem to be any dispute from what I have gathered in the course of the debate, as to the wisdom of that particular measure. My only concern is regarding the structure that makes it necessary to come back to us for authority to substitute Rossaveal. What has been happening about Rossaveal. if anything, and what will happen when we enact this Bill?
If I understand the structure of the main Act, the Rossaveal harbour will be transferred to the Minister and be his harbour, if you like—taken away from, presumably, Galway County Council. The order has to be published indicating the area that has to be acquired as part of the harbour centre and there are provisions for objections and so on. In the course of the year one sees mention of large sums being spent on fishery harbours. There have been questions here and in the other House as to the kind of area the Minister should take. It would be interesting in this House for us to know just what kind of area is involved and what he intends doing with it. I ask this question because this year there is a sum of £5 million for this kind of harbour development work. I find that hard to understand. It suggests to me that money must be paid or spent on harbours that are not included in the top five harbours—Castletownbere, Dunmore East, Galway, Howth and Killybegs, now with the substitution of Rossaveal for Galway. It seems to me that by virtue of some other authority and on somebody else's pieces of property money has been spent on harbours.
I just do not find it a happy thing to be debating a Bill of this kind without getting a fuller picture of our policy with regard to harbours generally. Are there going to be harbour centres which are going to be the recipients of a particular policy and particular expenditures? Are there going to be other harbours, the subject of another policy, administered possibly by other people? The relevant Act was passed in 1968 and the power was taken in 1968 to make orders in respect of five of these places. I am restricted by the fact that the most recent audited accounts of the Harbour Centres Fund, which was established by the Act of 1968, was signed by the Comptroller and Auditor General in October 1979 for the year ended 1977. It is quite clear that at that stage there were only two of these harbour centres in existence after 12 years, one taken in in 1969 and another taken in in 1970, after which nothing happened until we decided to substitute one place for another place.
Talking about £4 million to £5 million expenditure, I looked at total expenditure in respect of these harbour centres right up to 31 December 1978 and it came to £2.754 million. Now I am told that in this year we are proposing to spend £4 million to £5 million. Are we going to gush money suddenly into these three harbours? What is the overall policy with regard to this matter? One has only to look at the map to understand the new international law, and it really is new international law, even though the Law of the Sea Conference have not signed all their papers yet. It is an essentially new international law giving us 200 miles in the context of the EEC. It would seem that we, with Britain, are enormously important in relation to the EEC's possession of fishing waters. I do not want to go into who negotiated in 1972 and whether the negotiations were right or sufficiently informed.
In general, there seems to have been a curious lack of confidence in the whole idea of developing our fisheries. I remember leading a few delegations to a few Ministers on behalf of the fishing industry and it must be said that the present Taoiseach was the only one who finally got the point. The other two men just told us in fine language what the existing policy was. The Taoiseach did actually hear what we said and did make a change in the law. Right into the sixties the law was that it was illegal to have a boat beyond a particular size. It was a social policy administered for part-time fishermen and there was no sense of the possibilities of the whole affair for the country.
I should like to know why we have five harbour centres. Why not introduce a Bill to enable the Minister to do all these things which protect all property rights in relation to all harbour centres? Why just list five? No doubt there is a reason. It may be a good reason or a bad one, but I should like to know what it is. Are things being held up? The Minister has a map or a plan in his office, presumably. He sits there wondering whether people will object and therefore he cannot go on with the acquisition. He cannot spend money on what he has not acquired and the thing is being held up in a way in which it need not be held up if he had the power to amend the Schedule or to substitute or add to it, unless there are other reasons why that should not be so.
I do not know what the proportion of people who work in the food industry here is to the number of the farmers who grow the food. I do not know what the ratio is of what we call the processors of food to the farmers who grow it. That is not an easy figure to work out because so much of what farmers grow is exported. In relation to fish it would seem that the ratio is very modest indeed. I take it there is an overall plan to build up a fish processing industry with due energy and knowing that the costs involved in this kind of thing are all costs which must come back. We are importing £6 million worth of fish, on the 1977 figures, and exporting six times that amount. It may well be that in the international market, as a result of the 200-mile extension, there is now destabilisation in the whole business of catching fish in big boats outside the limit. In the light of what the conservation policy has got to be one would like to have some estimates made of what is procurable for processing in Ireland. I understand the structure better than other things about this. Is there any question of our processing here fish caught under the proper grant of quotas in the EEC by fishermen other than Irish fishermen? Is that fish landed at harbours here and made available for processing in factories in Ireland, replacing our imports and adding to exports?
In particular I should like to think the area to be taken in will be quite sufficient to provide for all the processing facilities and will be ambitious, whatever about the private sector money which will largely go into the actual building of the factories. Are there plans which have been operating already in conjunction with the local authorities for the development of roads? I do not know the Rossaveal scene. If you are building a harbour and you are hoping that there will be processing, you have to have a road structure. The timing of all that will have to be fitted in under some plan. I do not know whether the harbour authority the Minister will establish under this Bill will have a proper ability to get money spent on the roads servicing these harbours.
One of my great notions about economic life is that an awful lot of value can be generated out of consumption as well as out of production, out of what you do with your money as well as actually getting it, whether you save it and make it available for capital goods, or whether you spend it in a wise and sensible fashion, with good taste, and so on. Considering that eating fish on Fridays was the outstanding devotion of Irish Catholics for some centuries, it is rather interesting that fish on Fridays and fish on Wednesdays were imposed as legal obligations by Queen Elizabeth in Great Britain long before it became the United Kingdom. This was to ensure that the fishery industry under the old mercantilist regime of Great Britain would be built up. I do not think the EEC could stop an obligation being imposed on us all to restart eating fish on Fridays on a strictly non-sectarian basis.