Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We received a response from the then Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Varadkar, when we made inquiries with him. We also received a reply from the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources when we sought information from it. We can certainly circulate details of the replies we received at that time.

I welcome Deputy Ferris. I must inform him that we could not delay the meeting until 3 p.m. because we are obliged to vacate the room at 4.15 p.m. at the latest. We were afraid to delay the commencement beyond 2.30 p.m. I did not realise the Deputy was going to be detained for so long in the House. Our guests made their presentations earlier and what we are trying to do now is to get some sort of implementation effort under way in respect of our recommendations. One of the reasons our guests were invited to appear was to see if we could figure out a way to proceed. Perhaps what needs to happen is that a small group of members of the committee should try to engage with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, the Minister of State with responsibility for rural affairs and individuals such as our guests in order to establish which recommendations should be targeted. The inland fisheries forum was set up on the basis of one of our recommendations. The Minister has indicated that he has already dealt with some of our other recommendations directly but others take time. We would like to think we had an influence on the establishment of the national maritime forum but that was probably going to happen in any event. The forum holds an annual conference in May or June which, from now on, will be hosted at different locations throughout the country. The forum's conference was held in Dublin Castle last year because that venue was available but it will be moving to the more regional bases from this year onward.