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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 22 Jul 1924

Vol. 8 No. 17

COMMITTEE ON FINANCE. - VOTE No. 60—MINISTRY OF FISHERIES.

I move:—"That a sum not exceeding £25,318, be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 1st day of March, 1925, to defray the salaries and expenses of the Ministry of Fisheries."

It is with a considerable lack of enthusiasm that I support this Estimate for my department. It is not the amount that I put up from my department to the Ministry of Finance, and it was cut down in practically every detail without consultation with me. It is an amount to my mind that is not sufficient; it is an amount at any rate that from my experience of the department, I would not consider sufficient, especially for fishery development. In fact, it is scarcely possible with this amount to carry on the old fishery functions of the Congested Districts Board and the Department of Agriculture. I consider it a very parsimonious estimate and I feel that it can only be supported on the principle that half a loaf is better than no bread. From my point of view, I have a certain amount of reason for being satisfied that before the 31st March, 1925, a supplementary estimate will have to be introduced for fishery development. It might be well to explain the items from the point of view possibly of obviating discussion or perhaps giving enlightenment to Deputies in order to enable them to discuss the matter from a better angle, under the different sub-heads.

Sub-head A deals with salaries, wages and allowances, and there is there shown an increase in last year's estimate of £1,216. That increase is due entirely to the fact that the Rural Industries Branch of the Congested Districts Board has since the last estimate been transferred to my Department. That money covers the salaries of the persons who are dealing with that branch. Under sub-head B, there is an increase of £500 for travelling expenses. That is provided to meet the increased cost from the point of view of additional superintending staffs. There were two official superintendents recently appointed. The increase under sub-head C hardly calls for any comment; it is only £15, that is for incidental expenses and is to meet occasional law costs and the supplying of official publications to our superintendents in the country. Sub-head D calls for no comment. Sub-head E is the important sub-head of the Vote—£35,777. This is very much less than the amount I asked for. This money is utilised for carrying on various schemes including certain fish-curing, boat building and repairing, loans to fishermen, a small amount for the dredging of fishery harbours, supplying of nets and gear to the fishermen from our stores, insuring motor boats against total loss, instructing fishermen in motor driving, fish-curing and so forth, and from the inland fishery point of view, grants to boards of conservators and the management of certain fisheries that are owned by the State, and for the construction and maintenance of certain salmon hatcheries and for scientific investigation. For fish curing there is a sum of £4,000 out of that £35,777. That is we might cure, say a sample of 1,000 barrels of mackerel at certain selected stations in Galway and Cork for sale under an official brand, a Government brand, in the United States. We would require to purchase salt and barrels and to employ curers. The fish would be cured in the best Norwegian style and would be sold in one of the American ports, Boston or New York, under the supervision of the Saorstát Trade Representative. The same thing more or less would apply to the herring fishery and the places, in that case, would be Howth and Downing's Bay. Another matter is the development of home markets. That would apply to the employment of certain organisers of the retail fish trade for demonstrations by skilled retail salesmen in certain centres and for a certain amount of propaganda in regard to the food value of fish in order to encourage the eating of more fish. A sum of £750 is allowed for that.

In regard to the purchase and sale of fishery requisites there are places, especially along the west coast, where it is necessary to have stocks of salt, barrels, and so on, in case of glut of fish, in order that these may not have to be thrown into the sea.

If they cannot be utilised by the local curers, who are mostly in a small way of business, we think it a good proposition to have these things ready for such emergencies.

Would the Minister give any information as to the amount for requisites?

It is £3,500. For building and repairing boats there is £1,500. There are two boat-yards maintained by the Ministry—one in Donegal and one in Galway. These are also used for vocational instruction, and the same thing applies to motor engines and repairs, also in Donegal and Galway. The repairs would be £400 in addition to the £1,500 for building and repairing boats. Then there is an item of experimental fisheries, also in sub-head E, for which we are allowed £500. That is, to a great extent, being used for experiments with a view to the destruction of dog fish, which have become in many places a serious pest to fishermen from the point of view of destruction of nets, and it also applies to certain experiments with regard to the utilisation of a larger-mesh net. This Sub-head E also involves a subsidy to the Aran-Galway steamship, of £1,100. In connection with the insurance of motor boats, the Ministry insures all the motor and steam vessels mortgaged, that is boats that are bought as a result of loans from the Department, or taken from the stock of boats that we have in hand. The Ministry pays half the insurance on these boats, and the borrower pays the other half. In some cases latterly, owing to the effect of the slump, the Ministry fell in for the payment of the greater part of the borrowers' end of the insurance. This amounts to £4,000.

Could the Minister say what the value of the boats is?

I think £140,000 would be approximately the value. In connection with vocational instruction as distinct from what I mentioned already with regard to the maintenance of boat-building yards at Donegal and Galway, there is an item of £2,500 for vocational instruction. Apprentices are taught boat-building at these two yards and also we subsidise two industrial schools, one at Killybegs and the other at Baltimore. Fishermen are taught motor driving at Galway motor school, which is maintained by the Ministry, and certain occasional instruction is given in methods of fishing and curing. These are, as a rule, temporary persons employed for a specific purpose for a period. Under that sub-head also comes the sum of £1,500 for the dredging of fishery harbours. As a matter of fact, this is the one item in the Vote submitted by us that was increased by the Ministry of Finance. We only asked for £1,000. This, of course, is written off from the point of view of the Appropriations in Aid of the Commissioners of Public Works, and it is really not giving us anything. The next item is the Loan Fund. I will mention what the figures are and come back to that afterwards, because this is a thing on which I feel rather keenly. A sum of £5,000 is set off for loans, as against, I think, £15,000 that we asked for. There also comes under this head scientific investigation of the sea. There is an international arrangement by which we, as one member of the maritime States of Western Europe, take part in certain experiments of sea investigation. That Body is called the International Council for the Investigation of the Sea. All these countries do a certain amount of work and we contribute our little part. We benefit by what the others have done, and we contribute our share to the general work. We get benefit from the general work of this Council. They investigate temperature at different points, the salinity that prevails, the fish food and other matters like that. That is important because these things govern the prevalence of the fish shoals. We had an item down here that was struck off. It was an item of £5,000 which we asked for a certain proposition in the development of steam trawling. As a matter of fact, the scheme never developed. It was merely verbal. We failed to get any proposition in writing from the source which first brought the scheme before us. I know that latterly certain Tirconnail people are arranging to charter those trawlers that belong to the Ministry of Defence with a view to getting into this work, so that, therefore, nothing falls on our Vote. It was struck out by the Ministry of Finance, and it is not now necessary.

Then there is the item for the upkeep of certain curing stations and shell fish development, £1,477. There are persons all round the coast who are paid in many cases the munificent sum of £3 a year, or £4, or £5 a year, for supplying information to the Department of catches, and so on. There are certain curing stations then that have to be kept by the Government. Statistics amount to £600. The upkeep of certain stations which are the property of the Ministry, or are kept up by the Ministry, amounts to £750, and there is an item of £250 for shell fish development. That is chiefly the protection of the mussel beds, and a certain amount of investigation with regard to mussels and oysters. Under that head also comes certain items with regard to inland fisheries. There is £6,000 which is a grant distributed amongst the different boards of conservators in the Saorstát for fishery protection. This is utilised by the boards of conservators to pay their staffs of bailiffs and for general administration. There is the sum of £1,500 for the maintenance and improvement of hatcheries. There is one hatchery which was taken over more or less as an obligation or an arrangement. That is the hatchery at Lismore and on this is spent £500. That sum has been given each year for a number of years to the Lismore hatchery. They supply ova and fry generally through the country at our request. There is a sum of £1,250 for the management and development of fishery rights. That embodies the management of the Owenea River which was the property of the Congested Districts Board. That has been transferred to us now for management. We pay the bailiff staff there, and the manager of the fishery and there are some others that are coming over to us in Mayo—there is the Burrishoole and a few other smaller ones in the County Mayo.

Then there is a further sum of £600 for scientific investigation. The greater part of that really will be utilised to make experiments this year in the Owenea River, experiments that we hope to be beneficial to other rivers throughout the country. We hope to set up a certain type of trap at the mouth where salmon coming in will be noted and by which we will know the number of spawning fish that will be required to stock a stream. Those going out will be marked to note their habits from the point of view of their return and from the point of view of their growth from the time they go out to sea until they come back to us as they usually do to the river from which they go.

Now, on the question of the Loans, I have just a word to say. That item covers practically all the £35,777. The curtailment of the loans, is, I think, a very serious matter and I hope, after certain conversations that I had with the President and the Minister for Finance even since he was in hospital, that the loans will be increased during this year. The loans are very serious from the point of view of the fishermen. These men for some years past wore out their gear in what might be called a vain effort in fruitless fishing. They are now faced with a situation where there is a heavy load of debt on their shoulders, and though the markets are improving they have no gear with which to fish. And the markets are actually improving now. Mackerel and herring fisheries are improving within the last four or five months. I believe that the granting of loans now is a good economic proposition. That has been proved in Howth and in Arklow last year. The granting of loans will enable these men not only to pay back the loans now but will help them to pay off their debts to the State and at the same time maintain their families. I admit that the arrears on the outstanding loans are high. The outstanding loans are £130,000 and on these there are outstanding arrears of £30,000. But after all certain arrangements have been made, for instance, for the farming community with regard to their arrears during a number of bad years, and the farmers had no worse years from the agricultural point of view than the fishermen had from their point of view. Anyhow, if there is any chance of getting back for the State that £130,000 or £140,000, it is by enabling these men to fish and equip their boats. This can only be done by giving them further loans on approved security. We insist on approved security. We will also consider our information about these particular individuals who apply for a loan, their industry and so on, and whether it is such as to warrant the giving of a loan. We think that the giving of these loans will recoup the State rather than be a loss. This particular problem of outstanding loans is not confined to An Saorstát or to Ireland.

It is only three or four weeks ago that the British Treasury loosed their purse strings and made £150,000 available to the Scottish Fishery Board to supply gear and nets to the fishermen, who were down and out owing to the bad years they passed through. After all, if that can be done for Scotland, we feel that it is only right that the same privilege should be given to the Irish fishermen. The figure in the estimate is £35,777. The fact is that that is not the amount at all. £5,000 is the amount that is reckoned that we get back on outstanding loans during the year. But it really means that we get nil. We get nothing except we get it in advance. It is reckoned that we get back £5,000, and in other ways it is expected that there will be got back in all during the year £13,100, so that the net estimate for fishery development is only £22,677.

Sub-head F deals with rural industries. The estimate under that sub-head last year was £14,000. The industries were only transferred to the Department on the abolition of the C.D.B. by the Land Commission Act of 1923, which came into operation about the end of July of that year. The cost of the schemes between the beginning of the financial year and, say, the 1st August, was met out of the funds of the C.D.B. This year the entire service has to be provided for out of this vote. That explains the increase. The estimate for rural industries provides for the salaries and travelling expenses of the teaching staff at the different classes which are held on the southwestern and western seaboard. Salaries, with bonus, amount to £11,200, and travelling expenses to £800. The upkeep of premises and purchase of plant amount to £2,500. The big item is the purchase of materials for sale. That amounts to £9,000, but the amount is mostly got back on re-sale of the material to the workers. We purchase the raw material in bulk for all the classes, and it is served out to the workers. Then, when they sell the manufactured article, we are recouped. There is from that a return of £12,100. The total sum in the estimate is £24,500, and, allowing for the £12,100 returned, it means that £12,400 is really expended.

Item G deals with our old friend, the fishery cruiser. The estimate this year is £500 less than it was last year. That is because there will not be such a big overhaul.

You will not be sending her to Belfast this year?

I do not think it will be necessary to have the cruiser overhauled to that extent this year at all. As the question has frequently been raised in the Dáil, I should say that the need for at least one further cruiser— from the point of view of necessity, I should really say two cruisers—grows. The British and Scotch fishermen were the chief offenders. You now have them supplemented in their offences by the Belgians and the French. They are poaching in our territorial waters, and one boat is absolutely incapable—no matter how hard the officers and crew work—of dealing effectively with illegal trawling and with the general infringement of our laws regarding territorial waters, whether it be trawling or fishing for lobster. I feel that until finance provides for our getting at least one other cruiser, our fishing beds cannot be properly protected.

I am wondering whether the Minister would support a motion to send this Vote back for re-consideration. I gather that he, at least, is dissatisfied with the amount of the Estimate. The Minister who is responsible to the Dáil for the administration of this Department, feels that he cannot administer it to the satisfaction of the Dáil, certainly not to the satisfaction of the industry, and not to his own satisfaction, on the sum that has been allocated by the Minister for Finance. If the Dáil decide that this Estimate be referred back for reconsideration, I think it might be gratifying to the Minister, and would, perhaps, induce the Finance Department to accept, as an instruction from the Dáil, the view that there must be an increase in this Vote. We have heard very often from all sides here how important this fishing industry is, and how much more important it should be to the country's prosperity. When we are told by the Minister responsible for the Department—and he is directly responsible to the Dáil—that he cannot do the work, according to his judgment of what is necessary, on the money that is provided, it seems to me that we are almost obliged to tell the Minister that he is to go on on short commons, or to tell the Minister for Finance that we are not satisfied with this provision. I think, before deciding to move that this Vote be referred back, I would like to have the views of the Minister himself. He might say that we would not be doing him a kindness, that it might mean the resignation of the Executive Council, and that there would be further delay in getting even the £56,318. Perhaps he would advise that we should not take that drastic step at this moment. But I thoroughly believe that the majority of the House would agree to refer this Vote back for re-consideration, with a view to an increase, inasmuch as nearly every Deputy has said, at one time or another, that this industry should be fostered.

The fostering of fisheries is a matter which cannot be done by private enterprise. You might build boats or equip boats by private enterprise, but, unless you hand over the inland waters and the territorial waters beyond the coast line to private enterprise, it will inevitably be a matter for the State. The fishery industry is one that must, in the nature of things, be very largely fostered by the State, inasmuch as it involves very largely a common risk; that it is a kind of natural gamble, that you cannot foresee the chances or estimate the value of those chances, and that if the industry is valuable to the country there should be some share of the risk by all the citizens. That matter was discussed, I think, in what ought to have been a celebrated Report of the Dáil Commission, but was not celebrated. Nevertheless, some day it may be looked upon as having a certain value.

I would like to support the Minister's plea in regard to loans for fishermen. It cannot be said, I think with any accuracy or fairness, that fishermen have been negligent, when times allowed them, to pay back their loans. As I say, fishing, especially herring and mackerel fishing, is a risk to the best fishermen. No matter how good the fisherman he cannot with certainty say that he is going to have a successful season. We have not yet mastered the laws by which fish of any kind, especially migratory fish, come and go in their season. We do not know what their season is. We only know that for a few years perhaps there may be a regular fishing and then a sudden stop that nobody can account for or give an explanation of. That is not peculiar to Irish fishing. It is the same everywhere. But the fact that fishermen have been assisted by loans in the past, that there has been a series of bad years, and that they have got into arrears, is not sufficient to justify us in refusing to assist them to make up for those bad years by the chance of good years. If you have fishermen regularly working and taking a fair amount of risk in doubtful weather over a series of years they will make good. But the bad year must be taken with the good, and the State must come to their assistance in the bad years. I believe that is inevitable in the fishing industry, especially in a fishing industry which has not been thoroughly established, with a certain market. I hope that the Minister's representations to the Finance Department will be successful and that he will be put in a position to assist fishermen to live throughout the year and to pay off the outstanding debts. Unless they are well equipped they cannot catch the fish, and if they cannot catch the fish they cannot pay off the loans. I hope, as I say, that the Minister's pressure will have an effect.

I want to ask the Minister if he has used his good offices with the other Departments in regard to certain fishermen who cannot re-equip their boats because the State will not repay its debts to them. The Minister probably is aware that in the neighbourhood of Valentia and Cahirciveen there are several men who have spent time—lost time as a matter of fact—in carrying troops and munitions from one place to the other. They cannot get their money, and because they cannot get their money they cannot equip their boats for this season. That means that the Defence Department is destroying the chances of fishermen making a living and enabling them to do the work which is necessary to be done during the season. I hope the Minister will tell us the reason—if he can—why these accounts have not been paid. He may have had explanations. I am sure he has made representations, because he happens to be a Deputy from that part of the country, and in his, shall I say, advantageous position as Minister for Fisheries, knowing the need, I am sure he was able to make the earliest representations to the Department responsible. Perhaps he will tell us what excuse has been made for not paying these men what is due to them. During the last few days I have had several letters from his constituency urging that these accounts should be paid, and I hope the Minister will be able to say something that will compel—if anything can compel—the Department concerned to dislodge.

That can be raised on the Army Vote.

I am afraid not. I know that there are fishermen in the adjoining township of Howth who would be glad to have the assistance which the loans that have been referred to would give them to carry on their work. I want to ask the Minister to make himself familiar with the demand that was made from Dun Laoghaire in regard to the establishment of a fishing station there. A report has been received in respect of this matter from the Department of Public Works. They say that the pier is not suitable for the establishment of a fishing station. I would suggest to the Minister that he should have enquiries made as to the suitability from his point of view of Dun Laoghaire Pier as a curing station and then confer with the Department for Public Works and find out, if he can, whether anything might be done in this respect. It is probably a matter for a technician, but the people in Dun Laoghaire who for years have seen boats of one kind or another moored where they suggest should be a curing station cannot understand the statement that it is not a fit place alongside which to moor boats. I would like to ask the Minister if he would take that matter into consideration and consult with the people concerned in that part of County Dublin.

As he has done for more than a year the Minister has again insisted on the necessity of having additional protection for fisheries on the coast by having new cruisers. I think it is generally admitted that one boat is entirely insufficient to do the work. If the fisheries are to be protected, and if Irish fishermen are to get the benefit of the fisheries, there must be some assistance given in that direction. I do not think there is any expenditure which would be more nationally profitable than well directed expenditure on fisheries. If the Minister will give me the hint I will be very pleased to move that this Vote be referred back for reconsideration.

The Dáil is getting rather tired. I may say that we are all looking forward, I take it, with impatience to any criticism of the Estimates which is going to prolong the agony. In criticising the Ministry of Fisheries, therefore, perhaps the Dáil will pardon me for taking a rather wide view of the question. The Minister for Fisheries is an Extern Minister, a law unto himself until any critcism is raised, and then he is repudiated by the Executive Council. I think this Vote corresponds somewhat to the College of Science and I criticise it in that sense. We were told recently that the College of Science should never have been established. I rather take the same view of the Ministry of Fisheries.

The Minister?

Consequently the Minister, not in a personal sense, but as Minister for Fisheries. We have listened with interest to the Minister excusing, or explaining if you wish, the very large expenditure of £56,318 on this vote. His explanation largely was that a lot of the money is spent on education. If so, I commend it to the Ministry of Education. I do not think it is beyond the power of the Minister for Education to teach all that is necessary in connection with fishing. He seems to have a wide experience of educational matters. Why this multiplication of educational establishments? The main criticism I have of this vote, and not only this vote, but of the estimates generally, is that we are placing an unbearable burden of taxation on the people of this country, who are getting relatively no value for the money that is being spent. That applies to the Ministry of Fisheries. I think it equally applies to a great many of the other votes. Why I say that now is that I prefaced my remarks by saying that the Dáil was getting tired, and that perhaps this is the last chance I will have of treating the estimates in a general way.

Plenty more chances.

There may be plenty more chances, but I want a rest as well as other Deputies. Perhaps, I am looking at the matter from a selfish point of view, but it is the usual way to look at these things. Following the Minister's statement we had very rightly and properly criticisms by Deputy Johnson. Deputy Johnson takes the line that this vote is only for £56,000, and that we should make it double the money. Of course, that is a very pleasant way of looking at things. I take it, however, that the necessary education as regards fishing might be economically transferred to some other Department, for instance, the Ministry of Education. I think that Deputy Johnson and also the Minister for Fisheries, would lead the Dáil to believe that the fishermen along the coast are a very simple body of men, who follow a strenuous occupation, and are suffering from hard times, and that, apparently, the industry is one which cannot survive unless it is taken under the parental wing of the Minister for Fisheries.

As far as fishing around the coast is concerned my experience of it is that the fishermen are not dependent on it. They go out fishing if it is a fine day, and they stop at home if it is a bad day. They have little farms and other industries which they run concurrently with their fishing work. I do not think the fishing round the coast is a wholetime occupation except in the larger boats which go out long distances and trawl. What is called home fishing, or, fishing near the shore is not a wholetime occupation. I make a present of that to the Minister for Fisheries. When the men go further afield fishing is an enterprise that can be carried on only by private enterprise. In other words, the trawling industry is not confined to the home coast and is not carried on within the three-mile limit. It is an industry precarious, if you will, profitable at times, and unprofitable at others. If you wish to single out that as something that is peculiar to fisheries, I think the Dáil will agree that somewhat similar conditions prevail in the carrying on of any industry.

The Minister says he wants loans, but he is not very encouraging as regards these loans for he says they are £30,000 in arrear out of £130,000. I am not adverse to loans properly handled but I do say as regards any Ministry that the service of loans is a bad thing, and bad as regards this House as far as political influences are concerned. Loans do not always get into the hands of the right people. I do not say that the Minister would be guilty of any political bias, but I say that in spite of him loans would not always necessarily be used to the best advantage.

The question of Dun Laoghaire Harbour was mentioned. We heard, in another place, the other day that Dun Laoghaire is not an industrial harbour. I know that in old times the Commissioners refused to allow a crane to be put up there for coal vessels because coal might dirty the Harbour. Is it likely we are going to allow stinking fish to be cured in our national harbour?

We now know the secret.

Is it a secret? I think not. I think Dun Laoghaire harbour is preserved in its amenities for the purpose of making a good impression upon our American visitors. I am certain that if a crane working on the quay would be too much for those amenities of civilisation, a fishing station at the end of the Pier would not be acceptable to the ladies who walk the Pier on Sunday afternoons. I say what we are suffering from in this House is want of co-operation among the opposition. If we are to secure economies that are needful I am afraid a more effective opposition in some of these things will be necessary. At all events I venture to say that this luxury of what I might call fishery experts is very good in its way, but in my judgement it ought to wait on prosperity and when they have something less than 5/- in the £ income tax. All those luxuries of experimental science put before this House, I think, must of necessity wait until we are able to pay our way more effectively than at present.

Deputy Johnson made the point that one fishery cruiser is not enough. I say it is not enough and I say that one could not possibly protect the coast but I equally say if you had two or more you could not protect the coast. That is a big defence matter which requires a great deal more consideration than the haphazard putting on of an additional cruiser. The whole question is bound up in a larger measure than could be touched on in this sort of way. As far as I am concerned, I do not make any personal accusation against the Minister for Fisheries, but I say his Ministry is a farce.

I had absolutely no intention of speaking on this Fisheries Vote until this morning. I got a letter this morning which I ask permission to read, and I feel that if I am going to read this I must make a few remarks in connection with it. I think the Minister for Fisheries has been very badly treated by the Ministry of Finance. I hold no brief for the Ministry of Fisheries, but I think it is not getting a fair chance. The Minister told us here some time ago the trawlers that were held up and arrested for fishing within the three-mile limit could not be proceeded against because of the decision of the Attorney-General.

That is not the Minister's fault. Let us be just. Trawlers were arrested inside the three-mile limit, but they were not prosecuted simply because the Attorney-General decided they could not. Now, this letter which came to me this morning is from the Aran Islands, Galway, and it is dated the 20th July. It states that there have been trawlers within the three-mile limit and almost right up to the shore of the Aran Islands in the last two weeks. It states further that fishing-boats have to stay in for fear of losing their fishing-nets, and that a lot of boats got their nets damaged; that the shoals of fish coming in have been broken up by the trawlers, which are making a base of Aran Island, and coming in on the roadstead every evening, and then clearing away before dawn. The letter continues that if something is not done in the near future the poor fishermen will have to clear out or die of starvation, which they are on the brink of at the present time. I will read the letter, though it is very difficult to read.

With a view to expedition I suggest that typed copies of the letter should be made and circulated.

I think the Deputy has quoted sufficiently from the letter. There is no use in continuing it.

I have not completed it yet.

This is a serious matter, and I cannot allow flippancy to be carried on in regard to it.

I am not flippant. Can I not complete the reading of the letter?

No; the Deputy must now resume his seat. I cannot allow him to go on any further.

Will you take my protest? I am reading a letter that I got to-day. I am speaking on the Fishery Vote, and I got a letter from fishermen, and I wish to complete it, but if you say I cannot complete it I am satisfied.

If the Deputy has a letter to read he must not read it for the first time here, and delay the House in spelling out, as it were.

I did not intend to intervene in the discussion on this vote at all, but for the fact that I was struck very forcibly by the Minister's statement, which was to the effect that his whole attention was devoted to Galway and Donegal. I think he forgot about the east coast of Ireland altogether, and I rise now to bring to his attention the serious depredations that are being committed day after day along the east coast, especially in that portion of it from which I come myself. It is very well known that a good deal of illegal trawling is being done in Dundalk Bay, and from that as far as Balbriggan. I would back up the Minister as far as his Department is concerned in his endeavour to get an additional sum of money from the Minister for Finance to enable him to provide more patrol boats to look after our fisheries. If the inroads which are being made at present on our fisheries are allowed to go on, it will be a sad day, I believe, for the fishing industry in this country, because all the breeding places will be destroyed, and there will be no fish to be got in Irish waters at all. I think it was Deputy Hewat who said that fishermen, as a rule, were not dependent on the fruits of their fishing. I know a considerable number of fishermen in my own locality, and they are absolutely dependent on the earnings which the fishing brings them in. They have no land, and I have known these people to be absolutely hungry on many occasions because of the dearth of fish in the sea and because of the depredations that the trawlers make on the waters they fish in. These people have not the gear to go off, as Deputy Hewat suggested they should, to fish in foreign waters. They must earn their livelihood at home, and for that reason I believe, and am convinced, that the Ministry for Finance should place a sum of additional money at the disposal of the Minister for Fisheries so as to enable him to get at least one, or perhaps two, additional boats to protect our Irish fisheries. There is a great deal of money in the fisheries of this country, and if properly protected and fostered, I believe they will be a great asset to the country, an asset that is well worth preserving and developing.

I was sorry to hear from the statement made by the Minister for Fisheries that practically all the money in connection with this vote is concerned with the deep sea fisheries. As far as the amount that is suggested for the inland fisheries is concerned, I was sorry indeed to hear that it was practically blank. The Minister mentioned that a sum of £6,000 was being allocated to the Board of Fishery Conservators for the protection of fisheries.

That is the biggest individual amount for any purpose.

The Minister, I think, also mentioned that a sum of £1,500 was allocated for the improvement of the hatcheries in the Saorstát. Any person who will go to the trouble of averaging these figures will find that the amount is not enough. It is quite inadequate and insufficient for the purpose for which it is allocated. I come from a county which has lakes that are the most celebrated in Ireland, and at the present time, as far as the Minister for Fisheries is concerned, the amount spent on them is absolutely nil. There is no money paid to any person there, that I am aware of, for the purpose of protection. Tens of thousands of trout come up the river in the spawning season, and in the past years none of them practically ever returned. Persons go out at night with a light and a spear and take the fish out of the river and destroy them. The fish are killed in hundreds, and there is nothing to prevent the wholesale destruction which is going on at present. I am aware that the Civic Guard have been asked to do this work of protection. While I have pleasure in paying the highest possible tribute to the Civic Guards for the work they have done, I must say that this is work they are not able to do, because these rivers are out in country districts and they would want to be on duty all night on the banks of the rivers if they were to prevent the destruction that is going on. It is during the night that all the destruction is done. I am not blaming the Minister for Fisheries for any neglect on his part, but I am blaming the conditions by reason of which he is not supplied with sufficient money to give him a chance of developing the industry that is there in Westmeath. Owing to the endeavours of some local people, large numbers of young fish have been hatched and put into the lakes, and already the results of that have been shown during the past year, when the fishing has been better than ever it was before. Large numbers of trout were caught during the spring. If I were a Deputy on the benches on the opposite side of the Dáil, I would, as a protest against the amount supplied to the Minister for Fisheries, agree to having this Vote referred back. Deputy Johnson suggested that the Minister should agree to refer it back and if he does it will not necessitate a division. I certainly would like to see a much larger sum of money supplied to the Minister, because I have no doubt that if additional money is provided for protection purposes on our rivers it will come back a hundred thousand-fold to us. These fish cost practically nothing to hatch. They could be turned into the lakes in tens of thousands, and in years to come they would bring back their cost to the nation many times over. I suggest, therefore, that the Minister might say what are his expectations with regard to the increased amount he may expect from the Minister for Finance for this very important work.

I am not going to attempt further to read the letter that I have in my hand. I have just read it myself, and I think I am entitled to state its contents. It was only put into my hands about a half-an-hour ago, and several Deputies to whom I have shown it will, I think, agree that it was rather difficult to read. The point of the letter is this, that there are several foreign trawlers fishing inside the three-mile limit on the west coast of Ireland. The matter has been reported time after time, and up to some time ago the Minister for Fisheries would not be allowed by the Attorney-General to prosecute foreign trawlers fishing inside the three-mile limit. Now they are fishing inside that limit. They come in at night, and go out in the morning, and there is nobody to prevent them doing so. The Minister for Fisheries has only one patrol boat. That boat has to come to Dun Laoghaire and spend a week there coaling and getting in provisions. I think that the fishing industry in this country should be regarded as being just as important as, say, the agricultural industry. As a matter of fact, I think, if it were gone into properly, fisheries would be a more important industry than agriculture. Deputy Gorey would not agree with that.

I will agree with you a good part of the way.

I am glad to hear that. I suppose some Deputies will ask what do I know about fisheries. I know nothing. I have, however, been talking to several people who know a good deal about them, and I am assured that some of the most valuable fishing grounds in Western Europe are off the coast of Ireland, and that the most valuable spawning grounds are off Carnsore Point. The British Government realised that and fixed the limit at twelve miles, inside which British and Irish ships can go. These foreign trawlers use a trawl which takes up fry and everything. The Minister is not given power to protect the fisheries of this country, and if he is not given that power what is the good of having a Ministry of Fisheries?

We are baiting him, calling him this, that and the other, and saying that he is not doing his work, but how can he do his work if he has to protect the whole coast of Ireland with one boat? My information is that the shoals coming in along the western coast have been smashed and driven away by foreign trawlers in sight of the coast. I do not know why fisheries are being singled out as the Department that cannot get any money. I do not see why there should not be patrol boats here and there around the coast, and why there should not be money provided for watchers who can sight these trawlers within three miles. I hear that the Civic Guard is supposed to do that. What could the Civic Guard do when a trawler is three miles out—whistle and they will come in? There is absolutely no means by which an attempt could be made to catch people who trespass inside the three-miles limit. With regard to inland fisheries, I suppose the Civic Guard, if they knew how, could possibly do it; but with the sea fisheries there must be some attempt made to give the Minister instruments by which he can carry out the fishery laws. I am told on very good authority that the coasts of Ireland yield more fish than those of any other European country, especially with regard to herring, mackerel and other fish. Still the Minister is expected with one boat to look after the fisheries and prevent pilfering. I think the Minister for Finance should be persuaded by the Dáil to give them facilities to prevent pilfering by foreign ships.

Throughout this debate there has been almost a measure of unanimity in criticism of the Ministry of Finance, with special reference to the Vote under consideration—the Vote for the Ministry of Fisheries. It is, of course, an easy thing to criticise the Department which has the responsibility of finding the money. It requires no particular thought. When in doubt, curse the Ministry of Finance. We are dealing here with Estimates running to upwards of £30,000,000 which the Minister for Finance has to find, and for the expenditure of which the Minister for Finance has primary responsibility. We are all, I suppose, in greater or lesser degrees, idealists, and each Minister—Extern Ministers not excepted—would, I suppose, like to see the country blossoming like a rose under his wand. That is natural, and he believes he could do wonders if his Estimates were multiplied by five, by four, by three, or even by two. That, I suppose, is natural too, but the Minister for Finance has to find the money, and in eking out that money he has to exercise a sense of proportion and try to aim at some kind of proper perspective. Deputy Johnson was rather arch on this question, on the advisability of the Minister for Fisheries moving his Vote of censure, so to speak, on the Minister for Finance, and the Deputy is frequently arch on this subject. Extern Ministers are to be set at the Executive Council.

They have no responsibility for finding the money, and no responsibility for its proper expenditure. They are only responsible for their own particular Departments, and, with regard to these, they are responsible exclusively to the Dáil. It is, therefore, good sport, a good way of passing an afternoon, or a couple of hours to set a somewhat piqued and disappointed Minister at the Executive Council, and Deputy Johnson is quite willing to hulloo him on. There is, of course, the other side of the picture. I have reminded the Dáil that we are still engaged on discussing Estimates, the total of which runs to over £30,000,000. We have had some rather passionate rhetoric from time to time about the inadequacy of this Vote, and about the inadequacy of that Vote. We have been reminded of the genuine hardship which exists through the country, words of—I will not say threat, as I do not say it was in any way intended as a threat—but words of grave warning to the Executive Council were spoken, and, when all is said and done, it comes down definitely to the question of finding the money, which is the primary responsibility of the Minister for Finance and the collective responsibility of the Executive Council. It would, no doubt, be grand to have the coast dotted with protective trawlers, so that a Civic Guard would not have to whistle for the pirates to come in, as Deputy McGarry suggested. There, again, it is a question of money, and the Minister for Finance and his officials have to weigh one need against the other, and try to exercise whatever sense of proportion God gave them. The needs are many. The money is scarce. The people are poor. Taxation is high, and you have not here in this country at the moment just all the factors necessary to make the best of credit conditions. These are the facts, and it is no use just lightly cursing the Ministry of Finance, not that I think it is unnatural, not that I think it is not universal. I do not suppose that there is a popular Treasury in the world, but let us not lightly assume that if these extern Ministers got their choice the country would be blooming, and that it is all the fault of the Minister for Finance because he does not give them the money.

I am sorry that owing to my late arrival I did not hear the statement made by the Minister for Fisheries, but I understand that one of his principal arguments is that he is not getting sufficient money to administer his office. There is one fact that I am convinced of, and that is, that he is making bad use of what he is getting. On several occasions I have raised this question of poaching trawlers, both by question and on a notice on the adjournment. Of course, I got very nice and suavely-worded replies, but that is the amount of it. Everyone here who has been listening to me and to the replies the Minister for Fisheries made to my statement must be convinced that no adequate protection is afforded to the fishermen around the Saorstát coast line. I have already shown to the Dáil that it is an impossibility for one fishery cruiser to protect the Saorstát coast. There is a fleet of foreign trawlers at the present time operating from Lough Foyle right to the Donegal coast line, on to the Sligo coast, and I told you here a fortnight ago that those fellows are carefully and cautiously watching the local fishermen when they go out to fish, and they spot the place where those hand-line men started their operations. The next night those foreign pirates or marauders swoop down on this spot, with the names and numbers of their boats covered by tarpaulin, take the whole fish, and, in addition, destroy the fishing. The result is that the whole of the fishermen around Donegal are in a state of absolute starvation. They have a small spot of land on the coast line on which they can grow potatoes and oats. Heretofore they were able to supplement that by fishing, and so get a decent living. The potatoes failed last year, and they got little sympathy from the Government. The foreign trawlers steal their fish, and thus add to the plight that those unfortunate people are in.

When some of those trawlers are caught there is no prosecution against them, and the Minister explained that owing to some difficulty or technicality that arose in the Legal Department of the Government, they are not clear whether they have the right to prosecute them or not. I think they should risk prosecution. I also drew attention the last day to the case of the captains of two French lobster boats who were caught poaching on the Galway coast and brought before the District Justice. He fined them £10. Some poor fellow caught making poteen would be fined £50. During the week-end I was talking to fishermen and they told me that a fleet of those trawlers containing about 11 boats was based in Lough Foyle. Those fellows are on the same game. They watch the local fishermen and go out at night with their numbers and names covered. They swoop on the fish and the poor fishermen watching them can do nothing. There is no attempt made to cope with them. The last time this matter was raised by me, Deputy Cooper made a very valuable and practical suggestion. I commend it to the Minister for Fisheries, and I believe it would not cost a great deal of money. It had reference to the employment of motor boats manned by local crews for the purpose of watching the waters. I have been discussing it with fishermen since. I am sure if those boats were placed at proper points, those motor boats would be able to cope with those poaching trawlers. The impunity with which this illegal foreign trawling is, at the present time, conducted is getting beyond the patience of the people, and I would again strongly recommend the Ministry of Fisheries to give serious consideration to the suggestion about the employment of local boats, and to make some endeavour to utilise the money at his disposal, and to give some sort of adequate protection to those poor people, who are robbed by those foreign trawlers, acting with the utmost impunity. It is a scandal to see those fellows coming down and sailing away with the fish, and I appeal to the Minister that something should be done immediately.

I learned from the Minister for Justice with surprise and horror that in my absence Deputy Johnson has been promoting a Rodeo. He has been inciting the Minister for Fisheries to leap on the Minister for Finance, wrestle with him, and bring him to the ground under the hope of extracting a fishery cruiser. That is what I heard. I do not propose to join him. I accept the Estimate that this is all that can be allowed. Taking it on that basis, I want to put to the Government a dilemma which the logical mind of the Minister for Justice saw, but he did not enlighten us or give us any justification for the ineffectual protection of the fisheries. I can understand the Minister getting all the money he wants, and taking every precaution he wants. That is an ideal position, if he could do that. If, owing to the financial conditions of the country, that is impossible, is not the alternative to say, "We cannot protect you at all. We will give up fishing."

These great assets of ours—these fishing grounds around our coasts—are so long and so indented that we cannot afford proper protection for them, and therefore we must tell the fishermen: "You had better go out of the business and take up some trade on the land." Those are the two logical alternatives. But there is nothing to be said for a protection which every witness agrees is entirely inadequate. Within twenty miles of Dublin these trawlers are coming in. And, as a man said to me, they can throw a biscuit on shore at Skerries, they are fishing so close. That is obviously an intensely unsatisfactory state of affairs, and I should like to be sure that the resources of civilisation are not entirely exhausted, even if our money is limited.

We have inherited the system of protection by one fishery cruiser from the days of the British; we have inherited it from the time when, if it was necessary, the British Navy could be called in to help us, when there were coastguard stations all around the coast from which you could get good official evidence of people trawling. We are carrying on that system even to these days, and it is just remotely possible that the money might be more helpfully spent in other ways. I do not pretend to be an expert in this matter. I made one suggestion in the last debate. I will now make one other suggestion that will not cost any money. These men who engage in this illegal trawling make such large profits that they can laugh at fines. Why not make the punishment imprisonment without the option of a fine? It will only be effectual when they are caught, but when they are caught it will be a most effective deterrent. That would not cost anything except the time of the Dáil, and it would be something to help the fishermen. They would feel that there was more concern for their fate than they feel that there is at present.

Now, leaving the sea, where I am not very much at home, I will come in to the land, come to the inland fisheries. I want to support Deputy Shaw's plea for a greater cultivation of our inland fisheries, because our inland fisheries can be made a more valuable asset and made an enormous asset of the country. They are an enormous asset of Scotland, and they are an enormous asset of Norway; and they ought to be an enormous asset of Ireland. Of course, within the last five years everything has gone. Poaching has been carried on practically without any check at all. My own experience of my own river is that the Gárda Síochána are doing their very best, and are going out at night to stop poaching, and the District Justices are doing their very best by imposing very heavy penalties when poachers are caught. But more is needed, because people do not realise how valuable these fisheries are. We want to develop our tourist traffic more than anything, and the fisherman is the most valuable tourist you can get. He spends money on his boatmen and on his lodging-house; he is usually a man of some means, able to pay well for anything he wants, and he is usually a sportsman who gets on very well with the people. I have a fishery which I let every year. Last year I could not get anybody to take it. This year I determined I would let it, even if it was an unprofitable bargain, because I wanted to make it plain that it was possible for people to fish in Ireland. My tenant caught eleven fish in one day, and when he goes back to England he will proclaim that there is no place for fishing like Ireland. I want people to go back to England or to India, or wherever they come from, and to act when they return as advertising agents for Ireland, proclaiming its excellence as a place to travel in, and especially lauding the Irish fisheries. Anything that can be done to prevent poaching, to improve the breed of fish, to protect the hatcheries and the fry, and, gradually, to put the inland fisheries in a more satisfactory position than they are now, is a real service and a real and lasting advantage for the country.

If the Ministry of Fisheries can justify its existence as a source of wealth and income to the nation, then it ought to get sufficient money to carry out adequately its functions, and if the Minister for Finance has no better defence than that which is offered by the Minister for Justice for not supplying adequate money to the Minister for Fisheries to carry on with, that defence is a very lame one, indeed. We must look to other countries to discover what revenue is derived from the fishing industry of these countries. It is generally said that the fishing bays from Galway to Donegal are possibly the richest that can be found anywhere and yet we find that there are no adequate provisions made for the development of the fishing industry along that coast. There is no provision made for quick and immediate transport, and no provision made for providing those who engage in the fishing industry with the necessary apparatus to carry on that industry.

Deputy Hewat told us two very interesting things with regard to fishermen in general. He told us that they go to sea on a fine day and work at home on their farms on a bad day. I wonder what they do on their farms on a bad day. It would be a very bad system of farming under which a man would remain at home on his farm on a bad day or work on it. I know some of the fishing villages in at least four counties in Ireland, and I will say this: that the people who engage in the fishing industry, in the main, as far as I know them, are people with little or nothing else to live upon. They are huddled together in little villages dotted here and there along the sea coast. And what have they? In the main, they have a little thatched house with one or two rooms, and nothing to live upon except what they can garner from the sea. And yet we are told that they have other things to live on, and that they should not get anything else in the shape of subsidies or loans to purchase tackle and boats, and to help them to keep body and soul together, and to support their families. That is the suggestion that comes from certain benches in that connection. I know all the western coast of Clare, from Black Head to Loop Head, and along that coast, there are villages of fishermen who have nothing else whatever to keep them from starvation except what they can garner from the sea. What do we find? We find French trawlers coming in right to the very coast. I was told a good story —and I hope the Minister for Justice will take note of it—that some of these French pirates come in to Clare and ask for poteen in French. I do not know whether they should be prosecuted for that as well as for illegal fishing. It would be an interesting point in international law. But it is a fact that these pirates come to the coast and take away the means of subsistence of the people who live there.

I think the Vote is entirely inadequate, and that the defence put forward for not increasing it is a very lame one, indeed. I should also like to say something on the inland fisheries, and in that connection I should like to support the plea put forward by Deputy Shaw and Deputy Cooper that there should be greater attention given to them. It is true that fishermen come to this country from other countries for the inland fishing. I know something about the inland fishing along the Shannon, and when the people who would fish there find that there is no protection afforded to the fish there, they come to the conclusion that there is no use in spending their time or money in these districts during the summer season. Let me mention one matter: during the regime of the British in this country there was a certain amount offered for the destruction of cormorants. I do not think that provision is made at all now. I do not think there is anything paid for the destruction of these birds, and yet they are the most destructive agents, so far as the inland fisheries are concerned. That is one item alone, a very petty item I think you will find it, but yet it affects the inland fishing industry very much. There is another aspect, and I suppose I will be accused of dragging this aspect into every question that I endeavour to speak on in the Dáil, but I will drag it into this question, and I do so with all sincerity; in the western seaboard the fishing districts are mainly centres where you will find the Irish language living as a spoken tongue. The people living in those districts can be used to preserve the Irish language as a living language, and to help to spread it over the country, right up to the very Pale. And yet to preserve the fishing industry in these Irish-speaking areas, an industry on which these people mainly depend for their subsistence, there is a vote of only £56,000. I think that such an action on the part of a Government that claims to be national, that claims to have a desire to perpetuate the lives, the traditions, and everything that appertains to national distinctiveness, is very petty, in allowing the life blood of the nation to trickle through at these fishing districts, as is being done. You are only encouraging emigration from these districts. To suggest that these people have other means of subsistence than what they derive from the sea, which they have not, is simply toying with the question, and it is also toying with the question on the part of the Government to grant such a small amount for the protection and extension of fishing on the western coast.

In my opinion the Minister for Justice is quite right in what he said, and I will try to prove that he is right. I have stood up in the Dáil on previous occasions on this question of fisheries development, and I found very little support. It is quite as defensible and quite as right to steal the crops off the land as it is to steal the fish around our coast, and it is quite as defensible and quite as right to destroy the crops on the land as it is to destroy the fish in the inland rivers, and to destroy our spawning stock. The reason the Minister is right is this: there is no use asking for money to protect fisheries if you have not a proper scheme to administer. Has the Minister a scheme, or is he satisfied with the scheme he has got? I, as a man who knows something about inland fisheries, having spent a number of years in inland fishing, know that the present system is rotten and the most ineffective in the world. It is modelled on nothing, and no attempt has been made at improvement. If we had a proper scheme we would give the money for the administration of it, but we have not a proper scheme, either as regards inland or the sea fisheries. I would venture to suggest to those at the head of the fisheries in this country that they know very little about them. It was always a neglected industry. Under the British regime it was neglected. It was carried on wrongly then, and it is carried on in the same way to-day. I have no confidence in the present Ministry and the present method of doing things. What we want is the right kind of experts to sit down and devise a proper scheme, and when you have a proper scheme, by all means finance it. What comparison has the Irish scheme with the Scotch scheme, either inland or coast? Have you as good or as effective a method in Ireland as in Scotland, and if not, why have you not? It is all very well to ask for money here. For what? To give us a Board of Conservators, to pay a few old men to protect rivers in the fishing season, while nothing is being done to protect them in the spawning season. There is not a scrap of protection in the inland rivers in the spawning season. You have an odd Civic Guard here and there, who attempts to do it, and an odd policeman here and there attempted to do it formerly, but only an odd one.

I suggested previously that where there are rivers to protect there should be men trained in fishery protection attached to every Civic Guard barracks in the country bordering on spawning beds and spawning streams. They could be moved around in the different seasons where protection is needed; there is no need for protection in the upper reaches in the summer, but there is an absolutely urgent need in the winter. You can take them where they are needed in the summer time. Take them to rivers where fishing is going on and have your laws enforced. A very small number of men would do it. In the absence of a proper scheme, and in the absence of knowledge as to whether you are going to get value for your money, I do not see the use of voting money. The Scotch inland fisheries have been developed into a great national asset. Anyone who knows about the Scotch fishing knows what a great asset it is. We have better natural facilities here, better rivers and more of them, and lakes. Before the Scotch started developing their fisheries we were far in front of them. At one time Ireland was far ahead of Scotland, and England had practically no fish at all in its rivers. To-day the English returns are quite good, even though a number of the rivers are polluted in passing through industrial centres. A few years ago England was sending nothing to the London markets; now they are, for they have developed their fisheries. They have a proper scheme, as they have in Scotland. I suggest that if you want to do anything with your fisheries here you must go to countries where they have a well-developed and well-thought-out scheme. Send men over to study the conditions there, and get them to give a report to somebody who will be able to give a proper decision on this matter. A Deputy here has suggested that there is very little difference between the wealth of our fisheries and the wealth of our lands, if properly developed. I will not say one is equal to the other, but it might be found that fisheries would be the second biggest item of our national wealth.

I do not think that there is any one item of the produce of the land, such as cattle or poultry, which is a big thing, that would be equal to the value of our fishing if it were properly developed and if the fish were properly marketed. What facilities have our fishermen got to dispose of their fish? Have they got any, or what effort has been made in that direction? Not a word has been said in this Vote, although this matter has been laboured on previous occasions, of procuring facilities for the disposal of the fish. There are a lot of words in the Vote, but very little in them. Loans are very desirable, no doubt, for the reason that fishing is a very precarious industry. Men may be very well off this year after a splendid season, but next season they may be, practically speaking, bankrupt. They will owe money to the local shopkeepers. Loans are good, but loans are not the principal thing. The fact is that all our little fishing villages are generally in the hands of the local shopkeepers, the local gombeen men, who buy the fish at a very bad price, a hundred per cent. lower than London prices. They get no chance of selling their fish direct, and a number of people are fattening on their backs; no facilities have been given them, and no effort has been made to procure facilities for them. Deputy White reminds me that they are being paid 10d. and 11d. for salmon in Donegal, while the London price is 2s. 6d., but that is no news to me. It is a common practice, and what has always obtained. We have not yet built up schemes. The fishermen on the coast have not been taught a method or have not been encouraged in any scheme of self help which they could carry out for themselves if they tried, and if they were only organised.

A Deputy referred to the destruction of cormorants. There is also the destruction of the seals, otters, and of several other things that destroy fish. With proper organisation a good deal of this could be done by the fishermen themselves, but no effort has been made to secure proper organisation. If the fishermen could be taught to help themselves and to see what they could do to help themselves, they would willingly do it. I suggest that when we get a vacation the Minister should go for a prolonged cruise along the coast with his officials and see things for himself. I think he will find something to see, that is, if he confines himself to the coast. With regard to inland development, all our Irish rivers could be made to carry seven or eight times as much as they are carrying at the moment. While the disturbance was going on advantage was taken of it in nearly all districts—certainly in that in my constituency, which I know, the Waterford fishery district, and practically the whole fishing was destroyed. Men came along from village to village, dynamited and killed all the fish. They destroyed rivers wholesale. Dynamite and other explosives such as gelignite were used. This is all a matter of the greatest importance, and there is, as I said before, no well-thought-out scheme to help to meet it, and until you have a scheme you are not beginning at the right end. Except you are prepared to set up a Commission, send out a few intelligent men who know something about the subject to take lessons in other countries, you will do nothing. You need not begin the experiments here. They have been carried out elsewhere, and results can be obtained in a month or two months. If you do that you will be going in the right way, and a few hundreds spent that way will get good results. £57,000 is not a small sum, and with intelligent co-operation by the fishermen a good deal could be done with it, to give them, in the first instance, a proper scheme, instead of handing money to people who know nothing about the subject.

I would like to refer very briefly to some of the statements that Deputy Hewat made in the course of this discussion.

It is not worth while.

I did not intend to intervene in this discussion at all if it were not for some of the statements made. Deputy Hewat said that the fishing industry was a part-time occupation when he deprecated the giving of loans to fishermen, and when he was inclined to be generally sarcastic about the grievances of fishermen. I think I might be able to convince him that many of his statements were made without very much knowledge of the facts. Deputy Hewat, I submit, knows very little of the fishing industry in a good many parts of the country. He knows very little of the conditions under which the fishermen live, and perhaps some of the statements in a letter from a gentleman who is very conversant with the fishing industry in West Cork, and who knows the conditions under which the fishermen there live, might serve to enlighten him as to the exact position and as to the need for something to be done to improve these conditions. This gentleman deals with the conditions in a fishing island off the coast of West Cork, an island entirely inhabited by fishermen. He says:—

The area of the island is about five hundred acres, with about one-third arable land; the remainder is a mass of bare rocks. There are forty-two families on the island with only three slate houses; the remainder are miserable hovels with, on an average, five or six living in each. As can be seen from the above, the farms are small, only a few acres in each. At present there are sixteen families without a cow and several with only one, and that a very poor one, so that for the greater part of the year the vast majority are unable to get milk, they are unable to buy substitutes, the chief articles of diet being bread, black tea and potatoes, with the result that from want of proper nourishment there are four children suffering from bone disease at present in Skibbereen Hospital.

The chief industry of the islanders was lobstering, and the condition of this was given, I think, on last week's Star, where it was stated that a cutter called to Schull Harbour for a cargo of lobsters, and had to depart again as none were to be had.

I spent nearly five years teaching in England (N. Staffs), and came in contact with many children from the slums, but their sufferings were entirely eclipsed by those of the children in Hare Island. The latter are compelled to pick winkles. The season for such starts about October and continues till June, and one can imagine children (boys and girls) from eight years upwards standing in the mud for a period of four hours, knee-deep, and even deeper, on a frosty morning picking winkles (for a mere trifle). I have had several instances of children trying to escape the punishment by stealing away to school often without their breakfasts, and parents following them requesting me to send them home, as they were unable to obtain the price of the next morning's breakfast otherwise.

Deputy Hewat, I respectfully submit, in the comfort of his suburban home, is very much out of touch with the people that are referred to in that letter. He had no right whatever to speak of them in the flippant and sarcastic way that he did. In that particular area there is a great need for some works to be started to improve the conditions of the fishermen, and to give them better facilities to carry on their trade. I have in mind a particular scheme that was put up by the Congested Districts Board in West Cork some years ago. That scheme was a very great necessity in the district at the time, but it has been held up because money for it has not been forthcoming. The Minister, in his very frank statement, made it clear on whom the responsibility lies. I trust that one of the results of this debate may be that the Minister for Finance may adopt a more reasonable attitude in connection with the development of the fishing industry. Like Deputy White, I am also concerned with the existence of illegal trawling, and illegal trawling along the coast of West Cork is rampant at present. The fishermen complain of the action of captains of trawlers who are caught. They adopt a very abusive and violent attitude on a good many occasions, and sometimes they refuse to give their names, or to give any particulars whatever. I appreciate the statement made by the Minister for Fisheries as to his difficulties, and I appreciate also the statement of the Minister for Justice in connection with the financial difficulties, but I think in the case of fisheries that there certainly are very many strong arguments for some improvement, and I do suggest that the Minister for Fisheries should endeavour to make some advance in the direction that has been outlined in this debate.

I would like to ask the Minister if he would state when he is replying, what action, if any, has been taken by his Department, to afford facilities for the transport of fish to inland towns. We often read in the papers of where there is a glut of fish which cannot be disposed of, and at the same time in most inland towns it is impossible to purchase fish at all, except you go into a shop and buy some tinned salmon or something like that. Now, I suggest that the Ministry should engage itself in trying to see if some scheme could not be evolved whereby the home market could be supplied. I would also like to join in what has been said by Deputy Gorey and others in regard to inland fisheries and poaching. It is notorious that it is carried on to such an extent that even in parts of the country I know of, people kill so much fish during the spawning season by the use of explosives, by spears and other methods, that they put them in large barrels, pickle them, and have them for the whole year. Another means that is adopted in some places where there are mills on the river, is that the sluices are manipulated in such a way that they are able to kill any amount of fish they like during the season, and I suggest to the Minister for Justice that if the Gárda Síochána were instructed to keep a special eye on some of these mills where these sluices are situated, during the spawning season, it might do no harm.

There is an item I would like to draw the attention of the Minister to—sub-head F, Rural Industries. In 1923-24 it was £14,000, and this year it is £24,500, an increase of £10,500. I notice here that he has schemes for the development of rural industries in congested districts, and I would wish to draw his attention to the present condition of the rural industries in County Donegal. They are in a very bad way. Lace-making, I understand, was a reasonably remunerative industry up to the past few years, but it has fallen on evil times for the past two or three years, and I bespeak the Minister's attention to that to see if he could put aside a sum of money for the development of that local industry. I understand that grants have been made from time to time in various ways by the Congested Districts Board for the development and fostering of this industry, and I believe that at present in several districts of the county there are good expert workers who cannot find any work or cannot find any market for the work they have done. There is also in some places glove-making carried on, and the very same remarks apply to that. I desire to draw the Minister's attention to that as well.

In the West of the county the homespuns are in a very bad way at present for want of proper markets. They are in a precarious condition, and if the Minister could do something by way of grants whereby some means could be devised, it would have a very good effect. He should endeavour to do something to develop and foster these industries in the County Donegal, particularly in the Irish-speaking districts, and these people are all living in Irish-speaking districts. Deputy Gorey made a suggestion, and I would emphasise it, that the Minister should go round in a fishery cruiser, have a look all round the coast and see how things are going on. I am perfectly sure he will be convinced of the statements made here and that he would have no difficulty in seeing the devastation done by these foreign trawlers. He could also see the inadequacy of the arrangements under which one fishing cruiser is expected to patrol the whole Saorstát coast line. I do not blame the Minister for the present condition of affairs. I know the Finance Department will not give him sufficient money to provide adequate protection and facilities on the coast, but the Ministry of Finance should understand there are millions at stake in the fishery industry round the coast line in labour and in transit and in the provision of wholesome food. I am perfectly sure if he would open the purse strings which he is keeping hold of with such a relentless grip, that in the course of time the fisheries would become reproductive, and in some indirect way the Minister for Finance would get back probably three times what he is asked to spend on the proper protection of the coast line.

The Minister for Justice thought fit to castigate us all for our criticism of the Ministry of Finance, and more or less suggested that I was trying to shirk responsibility for my own sins by saying "The other fellow is the cause of it." I have no intention of shirking responsibility for anything for which I am responsible.

May I say I had no intention of suggesting anything of the kind.

At any rate, the trend of his argument was that the Department of Finance was criticised unjustly. It might have been criticised unjustly, but, as far as I was concerned, I was merely putting the facts before the Dáil. This is my opportunity. I am not a member of the Executive Council who can put up his case there at that assembly. I have to defend myself here; I am directly responsible to the Dáil, and if there are things over which I have no control, it is here I must say that. I do not at all pretend or hope to pose as one who will try to keep everything happy in the garden by a stroke of my wand if the Ministry of Finance would be only good enough to do what I want them to do.

I do not think anybody could say that I ever did attempt to adopt that course. But I repeat that I think that I should have at least been given as much money as was available for special loan purposes under the old regime. That amount is not now available, even though certain monies were actually in the funds of the Congested Districts Board, and were specially allocated for fishery loans. These, I say, have been now collared by Finance, and are not made available for me for fishery loans. Deputy Johnson asked had I looked into the question of certain bills outstanding and certain claims for compensation, and seen that redress would be given. I have, of course, as far as I could, and, as a matter of fact, certain of these claims have been paid through my intervention. In other cases we have not had a decision. I have asked Finance, on the speculation of what is due by the Government to certain fishermen who lost their boats through army service of one kind or another, to allow us to make loans.

Regarding the pier at Dun Laoghaire, we abide by the engineer's verdict in the matter, and the engineer's verdict is that the pier is not suited for the purpose for which the Dun Laoghaire fishermen wanted it. It is a question also whether it would not be better to concentrate on Howth, which is a well-known fishing centre, and improve that from the point of view of harbour dredging and so on. At any rate, we are advised by the engineers from the Department of Public Works that the place is unsuitable. Deputy Hewat said that Deputy Johnson took the natural line. Deputy Hewat, I might say, took his natural line. He referred to the fact that we were getting no value for this money, that, in fact, we were not justified in expending this money.

Now, I wonder is it anything to the State, when it is considering the expenditure of money, to know that the expenditure of moneys is enabling its nationals, its citizens, to live and work? This is not in the nature of a grant. This is not a dole. These loans are merely enabling fishermen to follow their avocation. The loans are got on guaranteed securities which, first of all, have to satisfy us, and, then, have to satisfy the Minister for Finance. Of course, as I said, the fact is that the loans given by the Congested Districts Board and the D.A.T.I. were greater than are made available now. These arrears outstanding, great as they may be, are an inheritance. The arrears have not been contracted since the formation of the Ministry of Fisheries. They are arrears that are inherited chiefly from the Congested Districts Board.

Deputy Shaw complained of the neglect of inland fisheries. Considering the total Vote, I think the inland fisheries get a fair proportion. There are grants amounting to £6,000 towards Boards of Conservators. That is the biggest item; it is a sum which Deputy Gorey thinks is absolutely thrown away. I had a Bill ready for introduction, in the hope of its being made law in the session that is now drawing to a close, to reconstitute these Boards on lines which were entirely agreed on by an Advisory Committee, of which, I think, Deputy Gorey was a member. There are £6,000 in grants, £1,500 for hatcheries, £1,250 for State fisheries, which are also inland fisheries, and £600 for scientific investigation. That is £9,350 in all, which is a fair proportion of the total amount. I do admit that trout protection has been rather neglected, because there has been more concentration on the protection of the more valuable fish—the salmon. Boards of Conservators—say what you like about them—with the resources at their disposal, have tried in most cases to do their best.

Deputy White was not here when spoke. I am not going to argu against Deputy White that one boat is sufficient to protect the coast. But might point out to him that there are twenty-six local gentlemen from In nishowen fishing in the Fleetwood trawlers, and I think if he would make enquiries he would find that these are the spies, these are the fellows who show the trawlers where the fishing beds are. Deputy Cooper referred to the fact that we should utilise the services of local fishermen in this matter. We do, and a big proportion of the cases where we prosecute are reported to us by the local fishermen. We enlist their support, as far as we can, and tell them the type of information we want in order to justify us in prosecuting so as to get a conviction.

Deputy Pádraig O hOgáin referred to the cormorant pests. Boards of Conservators in many districts have power to give certain grants for their destruction. The dropping off in the utilisation of that power is largely due to the disturbed conditions. Deputy Gorey made a contrast with Scotland and England. The same laws apply to the sea and inland fisheries in the Saorstát as do beyond.

Are they carried out?

They have been carried out fairly satisfactorily in the past. They have been carried out less satisfactorily during the disturbed period.

They were never carried out at any time to my knowledge.

They were carried out as satisfactorily here as elsewhere, unless Deputy Gorey impugns the character of the gentlemen who form the Boards of Conservators in this country as distinct from those who form them across the Channel.

I did not refer to the law. I referred to the system and what they are doing.

The system of carrying out the laws is practically identical. The law is the same here, and it is carried out in a more or less identical way.

The law of propagation or the law of protection?

I am talking of the administration through local Committees or Boards of Conservators. With regard to Deputy White's reference to rural industries, I think he was not here when I pointed out the reason for the discrepancy between this year's Vote and last year's Vote. This amount came in only as a supplementary estimate last year. We did not have control of this particular branch until about August. In Donegal there are ten centres at present for lace-making and knitting. There is also glove-making. Glove-making was tried, but my opinion is that it was not a success. The homespun market in Donegal, as well as in Kerry, has been bad for the past three or four years. We are working on a scheme at the moment to try and open markets for these products of what are called "the classes" in the congested areas. We hope to work through a central marketing depot in Dublin, with possibly travellers to find markets for these products across the Channel in places where such products are sought.

Is the Minister neglecting the facilities for getting rid of the fish or the facilities for inland distribution that Deputy Morrissey referred to? Are these matters of no importance?

As far as the facilities are concerned, we have made representations time and again to the railway companies from the point of view of freightage. The Midland Great Western Railway Company has been so far the most accommodating. The Great Southern and Western Railway Company has, to a certain extent, met us in certain places from the point of view of putting on fish trains, which will stand by for the landing of the fish. As regards inland markets, we had a man on the road investigating the matter for a time last year. We were in the way, for a period, of getting fresh fish handled by some of the bigger type of multiple shop. Lipton's were prepared to put up a slab for the fish, but it was turned down from their headquarters. It is all very well to talk about the money that is to be had from retailing fish, but we have found it extremely difficult to get people to tackle that very question in the inland towns.

Vote put and agreed to.
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