Deputy Mac Lochlainn spoke about the "big five" and the big corporations that are out there, which have such power. They seem to have more power than countries and certainly seem to have more power than Ireland. That seems to be what the outcome of this is. We also have to recognise that their role in all this has brought us to where we are. It is these very corporations and their greed, where they put out these massive, big factory ships and absolutely decimate our waters. They just suck up everything and destroy the fishing beds and everything for the future. They are the ones that have caused the stock crisis and environmental crisis, but we now find ourselves in the position that the European Union is trying to salvage the situation and the very ones that destroyed it are the ones being rewarded for it. While the Minister of State is obviously in his position, we need to recognise that this is a national crisis. The Taoiseach needs to step into the breach here and recognise it as such. We have a situation where fishing boats in Ireland, which people in fishing communities have invested their lives in, will go out to sea this year with a quota for possibly a week or ten days. Are they supposed to make a living from that? Factories may only be open to do processing for a few weeks, such is the low level of quota we are looking at. That will be decimation for the future and capacity of the industry, if things do improve. If this plan to get stocks to recover were to work, and I doubt very much it will because the corporations will continue to do what they have done, where will the capacity be in three, four or five years' time for our industry to be able to deal with a recovery in the fishery? It could not do it because it will be gone. Giving some kind of dole will not solve the problem. While there has to be income support and we have to try to salvage what we can, it is so important that we recognise this as the national crisis it is. We have a vast scale of fisheries in Irish waters that have been totally plundered for decades, not only by fisheries from outside the European Union but by ones within it as well. Belgium, the Netherlands and these companies and countries have totally taken away the potential livelihood, not just of Irish fishermen but of other small fishermen from other countries within Europe as well. It has been a case of the biggest and more powerful corporations coming to the fore, destroying everything for everyone else and then being rewarded for doing so. Our statements on quotas are really statements on what we are going to do. What will this Government do to step into the breach to defend our national interest, the environment and fishing stocks for the future? What answers has the Minister of State got? So far, all we are hearing is there are meetings, the possibility of some little bit of negotiation to improve things and that we are going to give some little bit of money to fishermen. This is a crisis way beyond that. We have to recognise that there has been a failure. Ireland's big failure when we went into European Union, which was the Common Market at the time, has been the fishing sector. The fishing sector was sold out from the very beginning. That is widely recognised. Now is the time, when we are probably at the darkest hour of it, for the Government to step up and recognise not just that we have to do something, but we have a plan and we will put that plan on the table. We need to see the Taoiseach and leaders of Government step into the breach to ensure we can deliver because this is a national crisis that has never been before. On the issue in regard to the Hague preferences, this was a guarantee going back to 1976. What happened to it? It was just tossed away at the whim of the big corporations.

Sentiment score: -0.05

We need to see an action plan. With due respect to the Minister of State, that action plan has to be driven by the very top of Government.

Sentiment score: 0.32