Mr. Eddie Sheehan:

On Deputy McNamara's question on sustainability, the regime we work to at present involves our receiving a monthly quota. It is dictated in the first instance by the European Union and then by local government. The system we work at present is such that one gets one tonne of monkfish and one tonne of megs, for example, for boats working inshore. With regard to smaller grades of fish, one fishes according to catch composition. It is absolutely impossible to have sustainable stocks while fishing according to catch composition. I fished all my life and do not know how well the people in the room can understand my point. If one fishes according to catch composition or to a very strict quota regime, as we do, one will realise in the first instance that our quota is too small. Second, we must fish to percentages. One winds up dumping a lot of edible fish.

I agree wholeheartedly with what was said by Mr. O'Donnell. Putting labelling aside, we need to go back to basics. One can have all the labelling and scanning in the world showing that fish were caught sustainably, but one must ask how one can have a sustainable fishery with the regime imposed on inshore and offshore fisheries at present by the European Union and local authorities. The policy must change. For ten years, we have been throwing dead fish back into the sea. That is the conservation measure that has been put in place. Now, lo and behold, the same EU officials who have told us for the past ten years to conserve stocks by throwing dead fish back into the sea are now saying this is wrong and that no more dead fish may be thrown back into the sea. No thought whatsoever has been put into implementation. We need to bring a sense of reality to the arrangement. It is a very complex industry. I have spent my life fishing and am still totally dependent on it. We need reality because the system is a sham. Much of the talk on sustainability is a sham, unfortunately, because there is still no proper regime.

I addressed this committee in 2009, at which time the present Chairman was in attendance. We identified a regime whereby we would regulate the catching sector by limiting time at sea. We receive inshore and offshore quotas on a monthly basis and we fish within those quotas for the month. One can keep fishing if one has 15 species to catch. If, after the first week, one has exceeded the quota in respect of two species, one must discard fish of that species that are caught subsequently. One is legally quite entitled to keep fishing as long as one keeps discarding. Our proposal was to have a system that involved the cutting of the number of days at sea by 20% to 25% but the European Union, in its wisdom, and the then Government told us that was impossible because we did not have the scientific evidence to back it up. My education is fairly limited but one does not need a lot of education to realise that cutting the number of days at sea by 20% will conserve stocks rather than throwing dead fish back into the sea. I hope that answers Deputy McNamara's question.