Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have almost concluded negotiations at an EU level on our Common Fisheries Policy. Much of the scientific information from Ireland comes from the Irish Marine Institute based in Galway, which is fed into the ICES committee and then onto the European Commission. It is at that point that it becomes political. On this very day, an issue has arisen with the Governments of the Faroe Islands and Iceland with respect to the north-east Atlantic mackerel fishery. Those countries have increased their exploitation of that fishery by a factor of ten. One can gather the scientific data but the decisions on what to do, ultimately, are political.

The case is often made in Ireland that most of our fisheries exploitation is of demersal species and when those fisheries collapse, they are gone for generations.