Dr. Eamonn Kelly:

To update the committee, the process is painfully slow. We had hoped that this would have been long since put to bed. The difficulty is that there has always been a lack of clarity at a European level as to where exactly fisheries and fisheries licensing sits within the realms of the Habitats Directive. It is not clear whether it should be dealt with under article 6.3 and appropriate assessment or under article 6.2, which is a much broader, risk-assessment approach. That is the specific issue at question with the European Commission and it is fair to say it is a challenging issue for all concerned. I am aware, from checking e-mails in the last day or two, that we hope to be able to engage the European Commission in the coming weeks. There is talk of a bilateral meeting to move things on and we hope to see progress on that in due course.