You will admit that there are unusual circumstances here where the Board of Works are responsible for harbours, the Inland Fisheries Trust responsible for some part of the fishing industry, the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries responsible for another part and Bord Iascaigh Mhara responsible for yet another part. There is also local authority responsibility in relation to harbours. It is impossible to have a proper discussion on any aspect of the fishing industry when there is all this fragmentation and when one is not allowed to cover the entire scope of it.
Because of this fragmentation at least one member of this board should be from the Board of Works. I understand there is a member from the Fisheries Branch of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. The various groups should be represented on this board. I understand the fishermen are not represented nor the co-operatives. Surely this should be rectified. We want to know whether the people for whom we are providing this money are the best people to give us the responsible board we should have. The view generally held is that they are not. This board could be added to with considerable advantage.
Any contact I have had with An Bord Iascaigh Mhara officials impressed me very much. Certainly, those I met were first class and within the limits imposed on them, they have done an excellent job. Even one of the Government Deputies, Deputy O'Connor, was very critical of the whole performance of the fishing industry because he compares it with the performance in other countries in Europe. We must all agree with this. The main reason why we have not advanced faster is because the Government have failed over the years to provide capital. An industry that has potential and can show in one year with a very limited amount of capital investment that it can increase its exports by 39 per cent is an industry that deserves the support of the State in a way it is not forthcoming at present.
A question was asked here as to what will be the position of the industry when we get into the EEC, as we expect. I hold this is relevant because if we are to buy boats now and put them to sea we must know that the people who get them will be able to pay for them. Will the present set-up be able to cope with foreign competition? What degree of protection will we have to provide? We are told that we shall have to defend the territory of the EEC. Our territorial waters will become EEC territorial, according to the information issued to us and it will be a free-for-all among all EEC countries. This will confront our fishermen with very severe competition and we must ask if they will be able to stand up to it. At that point of time will we have geared them to the competition they will meet from much more experienced countries and, perhaps, better equipped fishermen?
I hope the Minister will deal with this aspect of the matter because it is extremely important to the fishermen who have the courage—and I mean courage—to borrow large sums of up to £70,000 at a time. These men deserve to know what the future holds for them. So do future borrowers, and I hope we shall have many of them.
We are all interested in the industry. I should say a real start was made about 1962 when we had the American survey team here. Deputy O'Connor feels their contribution was not a great one but all the developments that have taken place since have been more or less built around their report and recommendations. It was an extremely important start and my only criticism is that progress has been far too slow. That has not been the fault of the BIM officials who were at all times restricted by lack of money. They never had sufficient money. I doubt seriously if this Bill will provide sufficient money by increasing the capital available to them by £2 million. Having regard to the size of the industry and its potential, I think we are only playing at it in giving an extra £2 million. We should instead be providing £10 million if we were serious. Coupled with this there should be an intensive training scheme for fishermen and an intensive promotional scheme for the industry generally.
The grant and loan facilities provided in respect of boats cannot be described as anything but generous and, building on this foundation, we could have enormous progress provided the money was being made available. The information one can get is to the effect that this money is not freely available and that boats are not freely available and that training is not taking place as fast as it could and should take place if the industry were to be properly serviced.
As with every other form of grant and loan there are pitfalls and a notable pitfall encountered by BIM was the two large stern trawlers, the 110-foot vessels. I should like the Minister to tell the House what finally happened to those trawlers and where they are now. I think they were described as mid-water trawlers. What is the prospect, if any, for mid-water fishing in future? I tried to probe this matter when I had some responsibility on these benches for keeping in touch with the industry and, as far as I could gather, this experimental effort with the mid-water trawler failed mainly because we had not the supporting services required. I do not know if that is correct but I hope the Minister will be able to clarify the position and prospects.
I am jumping from one thing to another because I have nothing really prepared. Many speakers referred to imports and the fact that in the past year imports had increased to the tune of £399,000 or some substantial figure like that. The case made was that we were losing out because we were not getting into the fish finger business. I do not think this is a business that we should be so concerned about at present. I understand it requires considerable capital to get into that business and that when you have the equipment needed for it you must have a constant supply of fairly cheap fish. In this country we are in a special position because with a half-hour's steaming at any time we can be fishing and what we should be exploiting is the freshness of Irish fish and our proximity to the British market and some of the continental markets. Our policy should be high-quality, fresh fish. The time has not arrived for us to consider seriously spending large amounts of money in the fish finger business.
Even if we must import fish fingers and if people eat fish fingers, at least this accustoms them to eating fish and we should have nothing to complain about in that regard as long as we are selling our own fish and our exports are increasing as substantially as indicated by the figures released by BIM over the weekend. It is very understandable that BIM should be concerned about the criticism made and lack of information available to us and that they should produce this document. It gives us an idea of the up-to-date position.
What also impresses me about the fishing industry is that our landings were less than £3 million, but our exports alone were something over £3½ million. The calculated value of the industry to the country is £6 million. The added value here is obviously enormous. It is very difficult to find industries like this. The Government have overlooked the importance of an industry in which we do not have to import raw materials and in which we have such an amount of employment and added value without input, so to speak. We have only to reap the harvest. It may be a difficult harvesting operation and certainly is in bad weather and it has to be carried out in all weathers.
When I had some responsibility for fisheries from these benches I went to the trouble of seeing what trawlermen went through. It is normal, certainly in Dingle in which Deputy O'Connor is interested, for the men to go out at 5.30 in the morning. I went out with them at 5.30 in the morning and came back at 5.30 in the evening. There were five people on board that vessel. I do not clearly recollect now the actual figures but I know that their income was not by any means enormous. It was quite a modest income. It was sufficient to pay the men on board their shares—and their shares were reasonable enough—and to enable the captain to be happy about his repayments. It is a hazardous and tough life. It will not be easy to attract people to it unless the rewards are very attractive. It will not be easy to get people to work those sort of hours. When a man goes out at 5.30 in the morning and comes back at 5.30 in the evening he needs a rest. He does not feel like doing anything hilarious after that. Nevertheless, there is an immense attraction in that life and to me it was a most interesting experience. Fishing provides employment for quite a number of people.
I would have expected the Minister to tell us the progress that was made in the past year or two in the fishing industry. How many people are employed in the industry at the moment? Where are they employed? I would have expected him to tell us whether there is a suitable insurance scheme for these men, whether there is a pension scheme for them, how life might be made more comfortable for them when they are out at sea and when they get back into port, and whether there are sufficient facilities available to them to make the most of their catch when it is landed. I heard complaints in Dingle and elsewhere that when there is a successful landing of fish, when there is a plentiful supply, the price drops and there is a slump price. It drops because they have not got the proper storage facilities in which to keep the fish until the glut season passes and prices rise again.
All of us should be concerned to see how the incomes of the people who catch the fish can be improvel. The disparity between the price the consumer has to pay and the price the fishermen get has been mentioned by more than one speaker. This is worthy of investigation to see where the difference is, who is reaping the middlemen's reward and if it is excessive. There is a big difference between handing fish over the counter and going out to fish in all weathers. The largest reward should go to the men who catch the fish and not to the man who passes it on to the consumer.
I should like to hear from the Minister how many vessels we have fishing. Deputy O'Connor mentioned the fact that Norway has 40,000 vessels. How many vessels have we? How many more did we get in the past year? What progress is being made in this field and what are the future prospects? How many vessels do we intend to put afloat in the coming 12 months and in the coming five years? Have we any targets? What is the training programme for people to man these vessels? How far have we advanced? This is all part of the effort for which this money is being provided. Much more information should be available to us when we are discussing this Bill.
Members on this side of the House are concerned about the number of people employed in the industry and the type of employment they have. They are also concerned about how conditions can be improved and how the industry can be made to attract more people into it. We are also concerned about the constitution of the board. Who are the members of the board? What are they paid? Can the board be improved? What are the members doing? What are they not doing? What are their plans for the future? The Minister should have told us these things for this Second Reading debate.
There is very little more one can say. We are prevented from talking about the facilities for the boats when they land in the harbours. We are prevented from talking about the problems of protecting our territorial waters, our fishing waters. I am impressed with the progress made in the past 12 months. I do not know enough about the enormous improvement in the herring catches. I wonder is this an unusual season? Could we have an exceptionally bad herring catch next year regardless of the number of boats? An increase in the region of 45 per cent is enormous. I think the increase in exports was 53 per cent in the case of herrings. Could the Minister explain this? Are there exceptional circumstances? Is it due to increased landing power or is it due to weather and other conditions of which most of us here are not aware?
There has also been an improvement in landings and exports of shell fish. To what exactly does the Minister attribute all these improvements? This is a question which is of considerable interest to us all. This is an industry with enormous potential but the Govvernment have shown their lack of confidence in the industry over the years by their failure to provide sufficient money to do everything that was required: to buy boats and the landing gear, and to provide the training facilities and the repair servicing facilities. Other Deputies have complained that fishermen have to wait for six or eight months for a spare engine or a spare part. This is incompetence of a very high degree when people are depending on this industry for their livelihood. In many cases they are depending on it not only for their livelihood but also to pay back the money they borrowed. They are working very hard to pay it back. This industry requires a good deal more attention and a good deal more investment. Since the Bill before us proposes to make £2 million more available to the industry I certainly am anxious to support it. The only thing wrong is this £2 million is still quite inadequate if we are to do the job that requires to be done.
