Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not doubt that at all but, as the Minister said, in two months it will be six years since the decision was made to bring in this very welcome policy because of unsustainable fishing practices in the six-nautical-mile zone, particularly in respect of sprat. I will not rehearse all of that again but it was urgent enough in December 2018 and here we are, almost six years later, and there is no policy. It is important to say that on each occasion the courts endorsed the right of the Government to produce a policy and also that it was an important policy. Nobody disagreed with the policy, except the two boat owners who brought the case. When it came to the final judgment, they did not succeed. The Department lost on the basis of a faulty consultation or information going to England and Europe. Those were the only two reasons that it fell. It was not because of the policy or on the basis of the arguments brought in the High Court by the boys from the two big boats. I will rephrase that - the gentlemen or the owners of the boats. There is urgency to this issue.

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