In addition to the MAST programme, there is also under Community auspices the STRIDE programme which will give support for science and technology infrastructure under the Regional Structural Fund. This will be looking for proposals later this year. Ireland has been pushing the case in Brussels that support for a marine programme is essential. The Marine Institute stands to benefit from substantial funds under the STRIDE programme. Once again it is necessary that there be the shortest delay in implementing all this. The second phase of the MAST research programme will come on stream in late 1992 with a funding which is doubled. If we are to gain significant research contracts then the Marine Institute and its support would need to be well in place prior to this.
The urgency of setting up the Institute is obvious, certainly if we are to be anywhere in the post-1992 situation. Many people with expertise in marine matters are getting very despondent after nearly 20 years of promises since the document Ireland—Science in the Sea first laid out the scenario. The Minister, Deputy Daly, expressed the hope in May 1986 that the Institute would be in place by the end of that year and the present Minister for the Marine has promised that it will be in place early this year. A very dominant reaction of the research community is one of disappointment that we are so slow to move in this area. After this length of time and after the frequent urgings from these people and the long deliberations that have taken place, to those who have seen it, the Bill does not seem to be one that will set up an institute of major importance.
I have spoken about the long deliberations that took place before the Bill had seen the light of day. As the Minister acknowledges the original group set up under ministerial directive in November 1985, was the Marine, Science and Technology Task Force under the direction of the Minister for Industry and Commerce at that time. Their task was to consider the need for an institute for marine resources and fisheries research and technology and they reported in March 1987. Having read their report, and the Minister's speech as printed in the record of Seanad Éireann in December, it seems to me that the Minister draws quite substantially on that report and it appears he draws on it without acknowledging it, which, as a teacher, I deplore. We rap our students over the wrist for doing that kind of thing. That task force was the basis on which this Bill was built. Some of the phrases in the Minister's speech are to be found in the task force report, such as the importance of the Continental Shelf and the fact that Ireland's investment in marine research and technology is tiny in European terms and that a very practical and unfortunate consequence of this is that other European countries know more about Irish waters than we do ourselves and, as Irish fishermen know to their cost, that is a very unfortunate thing, indeed.
Another consequence of the delay in setting up the Marine Institute is that apart from fishing — and naturally fishing is in the forefront if not the exclusive subject of the speeches of Senators Ó Foighil and Fitzgerald — the delay means that we are not applying the proper expertise. We are not able to advise on the most appropriate methods to monitor and control hazardous incidents before they get out of hand, for example, the episode of the Betelgeuse in Bantry Bay and of the Kowloon Bridge, and so on. A Marine Institute would already have developed and prepared the expertise for incidents of this kind. That is another consequence of the delay in setting up the institute.
Before long I hope we will have the opportunity in this House of discussing the current and sometimes bitter controversy about fish farming and whether its effects on the wild salmon and sea trout industries are deleterious and whether Government have any supervision over this business, whether licences are granted properly, whether people are proceeding without licences and so on. There is a whole area there of public debate which is currently filling the pages of our newspapers. If we had a Marine Institute in place this is one of the areas which would have already been prepared, clarified and applied. We are losing out again on that particular matter.
The task force also draws our attention to the fact that our European partners are streets ahead of us in setting up institutions, such as in France where a body with the acronym IFREMER combines these various areas of activity, oceanology, marine environment, offshore engineering and so on. As always, perhaps, the best model for us is not one of the larger European partners but the one nearest to ourselves in terms of resources and economy. The Danish performance, as in other areas, is extremely impressive for the tremendous range of technological supports which it provides to the marine and fisheries sector. That is an impressive example for a small country similar in size to ourselves. The Canadian Government, large in size but nearer to ourselves in its style of doing things, have integrated in an effective way fisheries research with other marine research. The task force emphasised that the fundamental problem is that the work of the various organisations in this area is unco-ordinated. I have been sounding out opinion among my academic colleagues on what they see — apart from the fact that they are disappointed by the delay in bringing out the Bill — as the single greatest need to which the Marine Institute should address itself. Without consultation with one another, individuals have said the same thing to me, that the overwhelming need is co-ordination of the work of existing departments.
I share Senator Ó Foighil's disappointment that neither the Bill itself nor the Minister's speech recognises the work done by Údarás na Gaeltachta nor, indeed, does the Bill or the Minister's speech recognise in any significant way the work done by universities and the third level institutes generally. In passing, I thank Senator Ó Foighil who paused in the interval of singing the Connemara Boat Song to pay tribute to UCC. I am glad he did that. The academic opinion is that the most important thing for the Marine Institute to do is to pull together existing areas of expertise, fill in the gaps that exist at the moment and avoid overlaps rather than attempt to start off from a whole green fields situation in areas of staffing, facilities and so on. The expertise is already there; the work is already impressive in third level research centres and in the universities and regional colleges there are the pools of researchers, the feedback between teaching and research, the maximum availability of equipment and, perhaps as well, the avoidance of ageing — that is to say, you have a continual input of young researchers coming into the various departments that are involved in this.
I make no apologies in the course of my contribution here for drawing attention to the work in this whole area that is being done in University College, Cork, because apart from pardonable local pride it illustrates the fact that the institute must build on existing foundations. If a lot of the work is already being done in Cork or Galway the institute should pull together what is going on there. Much of the work being done in UCC is being done on minimum financial resources. It is proper that I should put on record here that there is an overall group called the Marine and Coastal Resources Group in University College, Cork, under whose general umbrella there are perhaps as many as 11 departments in college providing a whole range of services apart from their own research. For example, the aquatic services unit in zoology provides disease diagnostic services and environmental analysis to fish and shellfish farms. All of the departments work through the resource and environmental management unit, REMU, which is playing a very important role in the general area of environmental problems in the Cork area. Its intervention and opinion on the controversial Sandoz plant at Ringaskiddy may well in the end be very decisive.
Particularly notable is UCC's record in marine research in Lough Ine in Skibbereen. The work there has an international reputation. The research lab has been rebuilt there recently and as a result of the work being done in Lough Ine it has now been declared the European Community's first marine reserve. I would like to quote from a publicity leaflet published by UCC by this marine and coastal research group in which they state:
The aims of the group are the documentation and evaluation of marine and coastal resources and their management, conservation and development for maximum benefit regionally and nationally.
That is an aim not very different indeed from the aim put forward in the Bill itself. The department of zoology is particularly notable in all this area and the whole work on aquaculture coordinated by the zoology department. They have postgraduate courses in aquaculture which already are supplying managers, pathologists, biologists and so on to the whole fish industry.
The zoology department is by no means the only one; there is also, entirely distinct from that, the Hydraulics and Maritime Research Laboratory which was set up in 1978 and whose facilities are unique in Ireland and have attracted research funding from Eolas, the EC, Government agencies and so on. Here there is basic research going on leading to doctorates and masters' degrees in such areas as wave energy devices, work for Wexford harbour, model testing of wave action, investigation of dredging effects in Dingle harbour and so on. So let us not once again confine our deliberations. One hopes that the Marine Institute will not confine its work to the matter of fishing in itself. Even the department of geography, which at first sight one would expect to be engaged in fairly non-practical work as it were, has done very practical work such as the economic implications of people's lives at the coastline and the impact which coastal changes have on people, on tourism development and so on. All those engaged in these areas in my own university will be very interested in this Bill and have already expressed an interest in it but they will be disappointed by many things in this Bill.