I am going to focus my comments on the challenge in our coastal communities and, to be quite frank, the neglect of our coastal communities. Today, in the fisheries committee, we dealt with seaweed harvesting and the applications that are coming in from major corporations. I asked a question of the traditional seaweed harvesters. I asked whether anybody from Government agencies had engaged with them directly to establish and vindicate their rights that have been there for generations and the answer was "No." We had Maritime Area Regulatory Authority, MARA, which deal with the licensing, Bord Iascaigh Mhara and the Department of the marine in and every one of them confirmed that none had proactively engaged, even though the Attorney General ruled on this years ago. It is complete neglect of the potential of that issue. Ireland, obviously, is an island nation. The Faroe Islands, which has a population not much more than the Inishowen Peninsula where I am from in the north of Donegal, has a bigger aquaculture industry than Ireland. There has been an utter failure to deal with the planning logjams that have bedevilled the potential of the industry. Everybody has a right to object but you have to make decisions in a timely fashion and it has dragged on and on. Years ago when I engaged with inshore fishermen - I had policy responsibility for this in Sinn Féin - I asked them whether they be interested in a financial support scheme similar to what farmers had and, indeed, what artists rightly have now. Their response instinctively was that they did not, that they wanted to fish and that they did not want hand outs and they did not want financial supports. That was understandable and admirable but now they are making it clear that they need financial supports to stay in their communities. We really need to understand the history of neglect and wilful failure by Departments where there was not a dedicated Minister for the marine for a long time. There is one now. I will acknowledge that he is engaging and he is trying but we need to sort this out. We are an island nation. I have just given three examples of the potential. I could go on about the Common Fisheries Policy and the fact that we have utterly failed and allowed our industry and production to fall apart. For example, Norway is a country with the same population as the Republic of Ireland and it has a seafood industry multiples the size of ours. I offer that to the Minister. We have to turn this around. We have to reset the culture of the Department of the marine. We have to have a Minister who drives forward, works with the industry, cuts out the logjams and brings wealth and prosperity to coastal communities.

Sentiment score: -0.05