Mr. Chris Reynolds:

I shall explain the point as follows. The Spanish fleet reported its catches to the naval base and fishery monitoring centre on a daily basis. Vessels would call up Valentia every day to transmit information on fishing catches. There were also a significant number of link calls to crewmen’s families through Valentia. There was a history of using Spanish for these routine operations. Link calls have effectively been discontinued because people have satellite and mobile telephones and the recording of logs is done electronically via satellite. That is what I meant when I noted that Spanish in routine traffic is a legacy issue. I did not think the fact that most of the staff in Valentia have good Spanish skills was a sufficiently sound reason for picking Valentia over Malin when deciding which station to close.