Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry if I came across as being irritated at the start of the Senator's contribution, but we all have a responsibility to try to give leadership. There are certain things I cannot do, even if I want to. I would love to renegotiate relative stability but to do that I need to get a majority of member states to support me. There is not a single other member state that would support Ireland in terms of changing relative stability, with the possible exception of Spain, because it wants more from everybody. For me to start even claiming that I could change Ireland's percentage of quota versus that of other countries is unrealistic. To be fair, it was the same for previous Ministers. Ministers get stick on this issue. This was a deal done years ago. We can get into the reason that deal happened and the way it happened, or we can concentrate on changing what we can change in terms of getting big allocations of new species such as boarfish. We can concentrate on building up stocks also. Even though we have a relatively small percentage, that percentage is increasing year on year. My focus is on changing the things I can change rather than having this circular debate on trying to take more quota off the Spanish and the French because we gave them too much in the first place, knowing that I cannot do that. We all have a responsibility to try to explain that to fishermen in terms of what we can and cannot do as a member of the European Union, and be realistic about it.

On the Hague preferences, I would like to have done more. The Senator's colleague, Pat The Cope Gallagher MEP, did a very good job in the European Parliament. I would not pretend that he was not involved in this debate, because he was. Unfortunately, I read some coverage that was inaccurate in that it stated the Presidency was very unhelpful in regard to the Hague preferences. I was surprised to read that. It did not necessarily come from Pat The Cope Gallagher but from other sources. That was not the case. We wanted to do as much as we could for the Hague preferences while at the same time avoiding a broad discussion on it because I was nervous about where that discussion would go. I believe we got the best possible deal.

In terms of discards in the pelagic sector, that date was to be January 2014 but we pushed it back a year because everybody recognised that there is work to do to prepare for that. The pelagic sector should not have a huge difficulty in dealing with an obligation to land. It is already illegal for pelagic vessels to grade fish, for example. They should land everything they catch, more or less. This is a fairly clean fishery; therefore, it is about catching small fish, which can be dealt with through mesh size and so on. I accept it is not quite as simple as that, but already we are speaking to the Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation, KFO, and to others about the way that will work. I believe we will make it work. It is much more complex than the whitefish fishery, particularly when we have mixed fisheries where six or seven species might be caught in the one net, and it is difficult to avoid that.

On the lack of consultation, I would like to have travelled around the country more in advance of doing this deal, but to say there was not consultation in advance of the CFP would not be true. I am not a difficult person to contact. The heads of the six fishing organisations in Ireland have my mobile telephone number and can call me. Generally, I meet the fishing organisations before every Council they choose to attend, unless there is some exceptional reason I cannot do that. There has been consultation. Obviously, people would have liked more, but there was as much as we could possibly provide.