Since reporting progress on this Supplementary Estimate, I have been participating in debates around the country on the issue of whether or not this country should join the EEC. Notwithstanding the fact that in the debate the last day I referred to the matter of a particular sentence in the White Paper, a sentence which is directly and deliberately misleading, I find that the inaccurate version is still being promulgated around the country. That inaccurate version, that misleading version, that version which is known to be misleading, is now, in fact, part of the official record of the Dáil of 3rd February, 1972. I am referring to column 866 where the Parliamentary Secretary said:
As a member of the Council, we will be taking an active part in all its deliberations....
The council there is, of course, the Council of the European Economic Community. The Parliamentary Secretary goes on to say:
... and will be in a position to ensure that our national interest in the fisheries sector will continue to be safeguarded by appropriate arrangements including the maintenance of special limits.
There is the word "ensure". That sentence can only mean that we will be in a position to ensure a number of things and one of the things we will be in a position to ensure is the maintenance of special limits. Now that is simply not true and it is known to be not true by the persons responsible for the White Paper and the persons responsible for what the Parliamentary Secretary said here on 3rd February.
We had the situation in which Fisheries Ministers from a number of countries were watching the negotiations in the closing days prior to the signing of the Treaty of Accession in the last week of January by the four applicants in Brussels. Extremely hectic efforts were made by the Norwegians in those closing days to improve the package they had been offered and those efforts included visits by the Norwegian Prime Minister to a number of EEC capitals. They failed to get an improvement in the offer to which we had agreed and the Norwegian Minister of Fisheries thereupon said that the arrangements offered did not guarantee the maintenance of the limits and he promptly resigned, having stated absolutely clearly why he was resigning; he was resigning because he could not protect the limits of the Norwegian fishery industry beyond the ten-year derogation.
The Norwegian package was very, very slightly better than our package, though substantially the same. With all their efforts the Norwegians got nothing significantly better than we got. Neither did they get anything worse. As far as the continuation of limits is concerned, the Norwegian package is the same as ours: after ten years the derogation from full access for all other countries to our waters will lapse unless there is unanimous agreement by all the members for the arrangements to continue. This means, of course, that when the time comes any member can veto the arrangements. The French, for instance, can veto any extension of the arrangements. If they veto, then the bargain lapses and the full fisheries legislation comes into operation, giving the French and all other member States full access to our waters right up to our beaches.
That was the package we brought home. It could be argued it was as good a package as we could possibly get. That is true at this stage. It could be argued that, since fisheries is not clearly as important to our economy as it is to the Norwegian economy, then OK. Many people would agree that that was a fair representation. One had to make up one's balance sheet and, if one set the gains against the losses, that was not a bad thing to do. But what is not acceptable to me is deliberately to mislead the people. What is not acceptable, to put it in the sharpest possible way, is to tell lies and that is what I claim has been done on this issue.
The deal we accepted was probably the best that could have been got from the Community. That, I think, is true but, if it is true, then it says something pretty terrifying about the Community and something quite contrary to the image of the Community generally accepted. The policy being peddled is that the Community is concerned with all the interests of all its members in order to ensure the very best possible for every member. The interesting thing is that the Community did not have for many years a common fisheries policy. It did not have that in the decade after the signing of the Treaty of Rome. It did not have a common fisheries policy at the time when the four nations outside the Community decided they would negotiate to become full members of the Community.
At that time there was no common fisheries policy and in the middle of 1970, when negotiations in many areas were already significantly advanced, the Six countries rammed through a fisheries policy, very briskly and ruthlessly, which was greatly to their advantage and greatly to the disadvantage of the countries proposing to become members. They did not wait until the four applicant countries became members and would have their commissioner and their parliamentarians, have members on the council and be able to influence the outcome. Having done nothing from 25th March, 1957, when the Treaty of Rome was signed until 1970, 13 years, they then rammed through a fisheries agreement advantageous to the existing Six and seriously disadvantageous to the four applicant countries.
We might tease that out a little. The Mediterranean is overfished and is a difficult fishing area. The Dutch, the Germans and the Belgians have to go fairly long distances to their fishing grounds; the French a shorter distance from their west coast, but none of them has anything like the fishing grounds of the Norwegians or the British or the Irish. None of the present member countries, with the possible exception of France which has a long west coast, has anything like the fishing grounds of three of the applicant countries. The Danes had a very great tradition, because of their traditional association with Iceland and Greenland, of going long distances to what was friendly Icelandic and Greenland territory so that in that sense, although the Danes did not have big fishing grounds of their own of very high quality, they had Greenland and close association with Iceland.
It was, therefore, a piece of bad faith on the part of the Community to ram through a fisheries policy in 1970. It was a ruthless endeavour to secure for themselves access to the extensive fishing waters of the applicant countries when they knew they were not in a position to reciprocate by giving access to comparable fishing waters of their own. If anybody thinks the Communities are concerned with the best interests of all the members, looking at the history of fishing alone in the Community should disabuse one because the Communities have behaved disgracefully and ruthlessly in regard to fishing.
The common fisheries policy came into operation only on 1st February, 1971, a year and a week ago. We had to accept this in its finalised and immutable form less than a year after it had come into existence although there had been no common fisheries policy for the previous 14 years. That should disabuse us about the benevolence and kindness and fairness of the Communities' approach to the exploitation of the natural resources of their members. Since they did that in this hasty and ruthless way when applicants with much greater fishery interests than they had were already knocking at the door, since they rammed through a policy which they declared to be immutable and which was contrary to the interests of all the applicants, if we wanted full membership we had to accept it. We did so and so did the other applicant countries. The Norwegian Minister for Fisheries decided that it was contrary to promises he had given to protect the Norwegian industry. He decided the agreement did not safeguard Norwegian fisheries beyond the decade for which the derogation lasted and, therefore, he decided that he could not in honour retain his post as Minister for Fisheries and he resigned. He described the situation as it was and took the consequences. It would be nice to have a comparable standard of behaviour in Ireland.
In passing, I may refer to an interesting sidelight on the way we ran our own arrangements. I am not certain of this for reasons which I shall give in a moment but my belief is that the Norwegian Minister for Fisheries resigned on 20th January and that his resignation with the reasons was reported in the papers of Friday, 21st January, 1972, some three weeks ago, the day before the signatures. Before going on, I want to pay tribute to the Dáil Library staff who, in difficult circumstances and with inadequate equipment, are extremely helpful and courteous. They have a real interest in their job. This morning I went to get The Financial Times which I have found to be the best newspaper on fisheries and reporting of the Communities affairs. The complete file for January was there except for the issue of Friday, 21st January. I thought the London Times would be almost as good and got the file of that newspaper.. It was complete except for January 21st. It was then approaching 10.30 a.m. and I had to come in here and I asked the Library staff if I could have any of the British serious papers of that day and I would have taken The Telegraph which has pretty detailed coverage. All of the English papers for Friday, 21st are missing in the Dáil Library file except The Telegraph which has just been brought into me. I do not propose to delay the House by searching through it now for the exact details of what the Norwegian Minister said. It shall suffice to say that he indicated a totally different understanding and comprehension of the fisheries agreement from that which has been indicated to the Irish people by our negotiators. Such was his understanding of it that he felt it incumbent on him to leave his post. I do not propose to labour the point except to say that people are being misled systematically and deliberately and that after the ten-year derogation, unless we get unanimity from all the other nine countries, no further measures can be applied to protect our fisheries. If there is not unanimity in ten years the derogation lapses and the full rigour of total access by all the other member states comes into operation. That is what was agreed to and nothing else and no fiddling can alter that. It would be nice if it were accurately presented to the fishermen of Ireland.
I want to say a word also about the fishery limits agreed between Ireland and EEC and which have now been accepted. Perhaps I should explain that my own interest in the sea is of fairly long standing. It is quite a long time, long before I was involved in broadcasting, since I joined the Irish Maritime Institute. I was sufficiently concerned when I was a broadcaster to persuade RTE to put on a series which I researched and presented called "Surrounded by Water" which was concerned with the fact that we were an island and that we did not function and think so as to take maximum advantage of it. I say this simply to indicate that my interest is not of today or yesterday. But apart from the long-term scientific interest that I have had in the sea in general and in fisheries, I now have a specific interest and responsibility because the fishing harbours of Skerries and Loughshinny and much of that strip of the east coast north of Dublin—but not Howth—are in my constituency. I have a constituency responsibility as well as an interest.
On the east coast from Carlingford Lough to Carnsore Point, to the Bend in Wexford, there is a 12-mile shellfish limit but from Cork Harbour to Carlingford Lough there is a six-mile limit for fish as distinct from shellfish. Going west around the coast from Lough Foyle to Cork Harbour there is a 12-mile limit. What is interesting to note here is that Dunmore East is an extremely important herring centre, that Kilmore Quay is a burgeoning active fishing port, that you have the Arklow fishermen and that you have Dún Laoghaire which, although one might not think of it as a fishing port, is a significant fishing port. Also there is Skerries and there are the other ports up the east coast. These are extremely important herring fishing grounds to which we had already conceded—I think conceded improperly—partial access by the terms of the 1964 Agreement. A number of EEC countries signed that agreement also. It was a bad agreement and one that we should not now cite as an indication that we have made matters no worse by the limits conceded now. That agreement hampered the growth of our fisheries. Extremely important fishing ports on the east coast are not protected to the same extent as those on the west coast.
If one considers the west coast, there is Killybegs in the far north-west and Castletownbere in the extreme south and there is not a major comparable fishing port elsewhere although there are fishermen in other places along the west coast who are showing great initiative and vigour. Between Killybegs and Castletownbere there is nothing comparable to what I have mentioned on the east coast yet the west coast, more difficult to fish and to shore, has a 12-mile limit while the east coast has a six-mile limit. This is an unfortunate differentiation against the east coast and against Skerries, Kilmore and Dunmore East in particular. I would like some sort of explanation as to why, if there had to be some lapsing from the 12-mile limit all the way round, and I do not agree there had to be, concessions had to be made on the east coast. I notice what the Norwegians were able to do even though they were not able to extend the ten-year derogation. They fought a better battle about limits than we did. I might say, regarding the comparison between Norwegian and Irish fisheries, that it is explained to us that fisheries are much more important in Norway than in Ireland and that consequently, a special case could be made in respect of the Norwegians. One can say two things about this. The Norwegian fishing industry is very much bigger than the Irish one but it is not nearly as dynamic as ours. We must give praise where praise is due. We might criticise Government policy in respect of fisheries in the past but the industry has been showing a cheering dynamism during the past few years. This is extremely welcome and is due partly to the efforts of An Bord Iascaigh Mhara and is, indeed, the result of the Government's efforts which are more vigorous than they were in the past. Secondly, if one considers fisheries as a percentage of GNP, the comparison between Norway and Ireland leaves the Irish fishing industry relatively more important than that of Norway. The discrepancies in terms of growth in GNP between the Norwegian and Irish industries is not as great as one might be led to think. The argument has been put forward that fisheries are not as important to us as they are to Norway but I do not think that argument can stand an examination because of the dynamism of our industry and the present scale of its operations.
The Parliamentary Secretary referred to training and research. He spoke about the Government's decision to establish a permanent fisheries school at Greencastle. County Donegal. As one who has been engaged at university level in the field of agricultural production. I welcome any initiative to improve the level of knowledge and expertise of fishermen. Training facilities are long overdue but it is heartening to know they are being provided now. Fisheries have changed from the type of folk traditional occupation of 50 years ago to one of the most sophisticated enterprises in the gaining of food. The industry has become more sophisticated than average farming. A good fisherman needs to understand such matters as navigation, electronic equipment and sonar. Also, he must understand the sea as well as understanding machinery. It is a complex and sophisticated profession.
I have experience in my own professional life of teaching institutions, not of the fisheries kind but of the agricultural schools and the veterinary school run by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. Before offering a criticism I want to exempt many dedicated and noble people who work extremely hard and fruitfully in these schools but having said that I want to indicate that everything I have experienced in more than 20 years of professional life and, prior to that, during my years as a student, convinces me that the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries are unsuited to the running of any place where people are taught anything. I say this because where the Department are running an institution, there is the dead hand, there is bureaucracy. Of course one finds the occasional noble person striving, even at the cost of his own well being, to do a decent job. However, it is obvious to me that if there are to be good schools concerned with training people in the gaining of food, be it from the land or from the sea, these schools should be structured in a more flexible and a more vigorous way than is possible when they are part of a Government Department. When I say "part of a Government Department" I mean that there is a partial liberation, a sort of window-dressing. Where the real power remains with the Department and where there are certain concessions or tokens towards liberation or democracy or control, these do not work either.
I am convinced of two things. First, the Department are not able to do this job to the standard required. The second thing of which I am convinced is that it is not enough in education just to teach people the necessary skills: how to repair the electronic gear, the engine or to look after the winches and so on. The largest fishery nation in the world for fish that people eat is Japan. It is not the largest in terms of total catch but most of the enormous South American catches are for fishmeal. The largest fishery industry for human consumption is the Japanese industry. This is a dynamic industry which is backed by the universities as well as by training schools up to the very highest level. The most advanced science in the world in the area of fisheries exists largely in Japanese universities and institutes.
In terms of our location as an island off a continent—as regards geography not as regards population or otherwise —we are the Japan of Europe. We are the offshore island with the tremendous fishing grounds, the huge continental shelf, the big ocean current flowing towards us and welling up on our shores with its food supplies. We have this extraordinary potential for fisheries and indeed for other aspects of marine science. I do not intend to pursue this because it would be out of order on this Supplementary Estimate, but I just note in passing that there is no estimate where the general subject of marine science may be properly pursued, although it is of crucial importance for Ireland. We are extraordinarily defective in this area of the sea which could be our greatest wealth.
It is not enough to have a training school under the control of the Department and not linked with the universities. We have some very good marine biologists in Ireland with tremendous dedication, but there is a shortage of funds. I shall not name individuals, but let me say that the most obvious case for a tremendous input into fisheries research is Galway, specifically into the marine biological work that is going on there. The connection of Greencastle not with the university but with a Government Department is the wrong connection, because there are other matters involved besides managing the boat, the gear and so on. I want to say this about the fishermen I have known. They live in another world, a vastly fascinating and exciting world. They are people of considerable vigour and courage; they have to be because it is a dangerous and exacting calling they have chosen. Their vigour and courage carry over into a curiosity of mind. They are anxious to study the sea and its fish and the possibilities of catching those fish. We have absolutely failed to structure a relationship between training on the level that is necessary to work the boats and land the fish and training at an academic level in regard to the whole question of the resources and conservation of fish, the possibility of developing new sorts of fishery, the handling of fish, preservation, sterilisation, marketing, all that sort of thing.
We have some very good people, some of them personal friends of mine over a considerable period, working in both fresh water and marine research in the Fisheries Section of the Department of Agriculture. As someone who has worked in that Department and tried to do research there, I think the atmosphere there is so extraordinarily unfriendly towards research, so extraordinarily bureaucratic and unfeeling that again we have an instance where a Government Department is the wrong structure in which to employ research workers and the wrong place from which to expect creative and fruitful work to come.
Research and training should be brought much closer to the university. There is the physics of waves, the design of hulls, the design of telecommunication equipment, the design of engines, the design of nets, and there is the question of how the quantity of water with which we are concerned behaves in regard to detecting devices and so on. These need physics and engineering as sophisticated as the exploration of space needs. In regard to the fish themselves, you need the most sophisticated biology and chemistry. You have to be in a university where you can talk to a physicist or a chemist over lunch and say: "I have a problem about a fish. Has this ever been sorted out in regard to a man or a domestic mammal?" The place for fisheries research or ocean research is close to the universities with all the knowledge, at one end, of economics and business management, to pure physics and chemistry, at the other end.
My own professional interests are concerned with farm livestock rather than with fish, but the problems are not so different in terms of how you carry on education and research. The end product is human food. I know the sophistication that exists in this area in other countries, in Britain, France, Denmark and Germany, for example. I know the marketing that is done in those places. We are dealing with people who will be more efficient, more scientific and better people in the market place than we are. That is not a counsel of despair for us that we do not have the talent, the ability or the courage to match them. We have all those things, but we need the structure and the investment to match them. We cannot do it just by calling up superhuman efforts from dedicated people. We must help those people.
The training to which I refer goes right through to the question of fish quality, the handling, processing and transport of fish and new product development of fish. When I say "fish" I mean everything that comes out of the sea. We are going to be up against tough, professional people. We shall have access to their markets and they will have access to ours. If we do take the decision to go in we are utterly unfitted for that in terms of research development work for our fishery industry. It may be said that it does not generate enough revenue at the moment to finance input on the scale I envisage. Certainly at the present levels of production and export it does not, but the growth rate now, if we do not wreck it by leaving it unprotected to harsh competition, is high and has been high in the recent past. Whether we are in or out, the potential is absolutely enormous. The Parliamentary Secretary argues that the only way to realise this potential is by full membership.
I do not claim to be a fish economist. I do not know the details of the restrictions that exist, but I think they are rather less than what is suggested in the Parliamentary Secretary's speech. Some restrictions do exist in the EEC and more may exist for those who have to put their fish in from outside. I have not gone into this area in detail and I do not claim expert knowledge of it, but I can make an inference from the outside. I believe that in round terms, perhaps it is a little less now, but certainly a few years ago the Norwegian industry was 20 times greater than ours. It is fairly dynamic and efficient in certain ways, certainly in marketing and in researching markets.
It may be that it will be of very significant advantage to us in terms of quantities and prices to be a full member of the EEC. I can see that possibility. I am not refuting it with research and with detailed figures, but I refute it with this general thought. The Norwegians do not believe it. They have a far bigger industry than we have and they believe the opposite. They believe it not just in the context of access to their coastal waters after a decade, but in the actual interests of their industry and of the sales of their industry. They believe that they will be better off outside. I do not know what their reasons are. I do not know the small print. It would take, perhaps, a week of fairly hard research into the economics of fish transport, fish sales and Community policy and this I have not done. I say that freely. I note the conclusion by the Norwegians and they have researched it very carefully and very thoroughly.
I want to say a word now about the question of fisheries protection. I note that we are in the course of spending £¾ million on a Decca navigation system, spread over ten years. In terms of the usefulness of the service that will be obtained that is extraordinarily cheap. It will give us a service which was utterly unthinkable a quarter of a century ago at what is and will be in terms of benefits a very small price. There has been an explosion in what is electronically and technologically possible not only in navigation at sea but also on the question of surveillance.
We use rather traditional methods of surveillance. We have two boats. Perhaps two are not enough and we should have more. I do not intend to talk now about what we should do with our Naval Service. I believe that we should have a completely restructured service rather like the US coastguard service with a number of responsibilities of which fishery protection would be one. The point I am making is that as of 1st January, 1973—not so far away now—we will have to give comparable access to all the member countries to our shore facilities. Already a good deal of poaching is going on and the temptation will not grow less; it will become greater.
The arguments for helicopters, particularly in relation to the west, are pretty strong. It would seem to me that we ought to have a more complex method of enforcing our limits. The assault on them is already considerable and will grow. The method of enforcing limits should include the two boats, and there is an argument for having more which could be used for fisheries research and for oceanography and hydrography. Now that we are getting a Decca network system we should consider whether we should not use radar from fixed shore sources, and possibly from floating ones also, and helicopters with the boats to give us a more complex and more modern method of enforcing our limits. To me they are unsatisfactory but still they are there and we must protect them for as long as we can and as well as we can. It may be that what I am suggesting is uneconomic. This is an area in which I would not claim any expertise. I should like to hear some thoughts on it from the Parliamentary Secretary. From the point of view of protection it might be money very well spent.
There are other reasons for having pretty sophisticated surveillance on our west coast. The south west of the country juts out into the busiest shipping lane in the world. We have a lighthouse system and we have a lifeboat system. If we have to spend money on fishery limits, on navigation aids and on lighthouses, on a totally different sort of navigation aid for different sorts of ships, and if we have to maintain a watch for wrecks and have certain arrangements for rescue at sea, and if we also need oceanography and hydrography and fish research on our coasts, there is an argument for putting all these different needs together and get-thing more cost effectiveness in that area. It may be that I am talking nonsense now, but I should like to hear an opinion on that.
There was an interesting passage on the Inland Fisheries Trust. We cannot offer very much sun to tourists but inland fisheries is an area of enormous potential and the more money that is pumped into developing it and doing conservation work on it the better for Irish fishermen, for the industrial aspect which must increase in certain areas, and also for angling tourists. The Parliamentary Secretary said that over the years repeated appeals have been made to the anglers of this country to join the Trust. I knew the Trust existed. I knew it had been doing useful things. While not directly in the area of the work of the Trust, both as a broadcaster and journalist and professional worker in the veterinary field, I would probably be a little more likely than the average person in the community to know about the work of the Trust. I am also personally disposed to join organisations which I think are doing something useful in areas of applied biology in which the Trust functions. Until I read that speech I did not know that I could join it as a private individual. That was news to me.
I might be asked how I could be so damn silly and so uninformed and that may be the correct and proper answer. I am suggesting that if I did not know it many other people who might be well disposed to it and willing to join it did not know it either. Therefore, it might be useful not just to make the appeal which the Parliamentary Secretary very properly makes in his speech, but also to use the media to urge people to join it because there is a bit of ignorance and a bit of hiding of light under the bushel in this area. Voluntary membership is a very useful way by which to get participation and funds. The work of the Inland Fisheries Trust is very useful. The fact that one can join it should be promoted very vigorously.
It seems to me, whether or not we go into the Community, that the potential, particularly of our sea fisheries, is unarguably vast both in the fish there and the fact that they can be caught and sold. That is a truth that nobody can escape from. The other truth is that there is a highly developed world fishing industry, that we are far down the list of total catch, that there is both a great deal of theoretical knowledge and very hard pushing necessary for the sale of fish, that, either in or out, none of the benefits of this enormous resource will come to us of their own accord. We need to make a very great effort, not just in development such as BIM are doing, but also in the areas of basic research and development as well as in the areas of training for the whole fishing industry and not simply in the matter of Government run schools or of teaching men how to fish. There is much more to it than that. If we do not put in that extremely vigorous research and development effort up to the highest level, then others besides Irish fishermen and the people on shore associated with the fishing industry will benefit from the undoubted resource which all the evidence proves is there and which we have neglected for half a century of independence. On the basis of the scale of vision in the Parliamentary Secretary's report we look like continuing to neglect this at least in the immediate future.
