I want to draw the Ministers of State's attention to very serious concerns over a multiplicity of issues brought to my attention by fishers I represent at Clogherhead in County Louth. Last month, as the Ministers of State will be aware, a trawler sank off Bettystown. Two Egyptian fishers in difficulty were rescued by the Coast Guard helicopter and the Clogherhead lifeboat. This is not an isolated case; it is the sixth such incident in recent times. There is a very concerning pattern. Exactly two years ago, an Egyptian fisher lost their life on a capsized vessel, the Ben Thomas, off Dunany Point, in Dundalk Bay. The recent Marine Casualty Investigation Board report into the fatal incident is absolutely damning. It says a number of things. Issues involved inadequate safety systems, the failure to wear personal flotation devices, the failure of the life raft to inflate, the delayed activation of the vessel's emergency position indicating radio beacon, the absence of personal locator beacons for crew and prolonged cold water immersion in temperatures of approximately 9°C. The other crew member survived but had hypothermia. A distress signal at the time of sinking was not made. This, obviously, delayed the emergency response. The MCIB report raised concerns about safety management practices, including the lack of documented handover procedures when the vessel changed operators weeks before the incident. Critically, insufficient crew induction and training were a big problem. There was expired safety equipment and the absence of vessel-specific stability awareness. I could go on. None of this is new to me or to the experienced fishers in Clogherhead. In recent months, local fishers, with whom I have met, people who have fished these waters for generations safely, sustainably and with health and safety at the forefront of their minds, have brought a raft of associated concerns to me about how the fishery in our area is being exploited by vessels with majority non-EEA crews. The Minister of State knows that this is against the regulations. They have serious concerns about how these boats are being operated and about the safety and training of the crew boarding and operating these vessels. They showed me evidence of boats registered to people with no connection whatsoever to and no direct experience in the fishing industry, vessels registered at residential addresses that simply do not stack up. People whose known business is, for example, home refurbishment and other such work are now for some reason registered as trawler owners. The authorities need to ask more serious questions of some of the newer arrivals to the sector. It is also alleged that on many of these boats, basic health and safety and training and regulatory statutory minimum requirements are not being met, as well as very substantive claims, in my view, of potential overfishing, routine breaches of working time at sea legislation, and other regulations that put the future of the fishery itself at risk. I have met this year with representatives from a range of different organisations, including the WRC, the SFPA and the Revenue Commissioners, and I have shared with them some details and the concerns expressed to me by the Clogherhead fishers. An Garda Síochána, frankly, needs to take a serious interest in what is going on too. We are assured that they are all doing their jobs individually and collectively. I know that all the agencies take a risk-based approach and a multi-agency approach to issues in relation to the regulation of the industry. I have some experience of this. One of the last things I did when I was a Minister of State was bring in the new non-EEA permit scheme for migrant fishers in the context of an international journalistic investigation that was going on at the time and that exposed some of the conditions of non-EEA share fishermen operating in the industry, so I am familiar with what happens. I have represented the Clogherhead fishermen for many years. In my view, however, the authorities need to act and need to start asking more difficult, more searching questions based on the information that has been disclosed, not just to me but to them as well. There needs to be evidence and action in terms of the agencies and their response to these issues. They cannot claim ignorance of these issues. There is a pattern of behaviour here and it needs to be properly understood and properly examined. This very week two years ago, I was supporting members of the Egyptian community in Drogheda who were dealing with their grief when their fellow countryman was taken by the sea off Dunany Point. We need fisheries that are operated well and that favour experienced, skilled operators, many of whom have been working in that fishery for generations, who always play by the rules. We need evidence that work is ongoing such that potential rogue operators will be rooted out. We know that lives have been lost in that fishery in recent years. I refer to the case this time two years ago. Lives were almost lost off Bettystown at the end of November. Lives and honest livelihoods are being put at risk, and the next Ben Thomas or the next Graceful Morning, the vessel that sank off Bettystown, an occurrence like that, is just around the corner unless the unsafe and, in my view, at times illegal practices that appear to have been tolerated for too long are weeded out. We need to weed those practices out. Doing so is how we properly support the fishers who have been working in those fisheries for many years and who put health and safety and the regulatory environment in which they operate first at all times. Lives are at risk and action is needed.

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