Lost at Sea debate stirs up tidal wave of Opposition anger

DÁIL SKETCH:FROM THE start it was clear there would be no agreement. But to say the Dáil debate about the Ombudsman's report on the Lost at Sea scheme was highly charged would be euphemistic at best.

It was verbal gouging at its most political, with a clear division between Government and Opposition.

Former minister for the marine Frank Fahey was at the centre of the storm about the scheme he established almost a decade ago, which allowed fishermen who lost boats at sea to apply for grant aid to replace them.

The Byrne family, who lost two members of their family and three crew members, when the MFV Skifjord sank in 1981, applied for the scheme but were rejected because they missed the deadline.

The case has rumbled on for years and the Byrnes complained to Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly who recommended compensation. But the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries rejected the recommendation and O’Reilly said the Oireachtas should decide the dispute between her office and the department.

The Opposition wanted the issue to go to committee for detailed discussion after the Dáil debate. That was disallowed and Fine Gael spokesman Michael Creed accused the Government of “circling the wagons to protect one of its own”, a claim dismissed by Mary Coughlan.

Creed returned to the circling wagons and repeated that Fianna Fáil and the Greens were doing so to quash the report’s findings. He said two of the former minister’s constituents got 75 per cent of the grant aid available.

Minister of State Tony Killeen said the complainants were “more than a year late in applying. The family did not meet some of the criteria of the scheme. The department maintains its position that the scheme was scrupulously fairly administered.”

Sinn Féin’s Martin Ferris put the boot in. He said that many would say “it was due to political cronyism at its worst; to write to the people who support the party and to forget the rest”. Fahey said those allegations were “totally and completely untrue”.

In an emotional address to the Dáil, he also said he could not accept the recommendation that the Byrne family “who did not qualify and should not have qualified for the scheme in the first place, should now be paid financial compensation. This would be contrary to the most fundamental principles of the scheme.”

The Byrne family are constituents of Fine Gael’s Dinny McGinley who, in an equally emotional address, described the way the scheme was carried out as underhand. “It has every indication and manifestation of a political stroke, nothing more and nothing less.”

Labour’s Seán Sherlock said it was critical that the Ombudsman should be allowed to present her findings to the agriculture committee. That looks unlikely.