Mr. Michael Keatinge:

I will try to go through them systematically and will call on my colleagues to help me.

From the outset I suggest we look at a country such as the Netherlands to see what might have happened had we not been diligent in the fishing sector. In essence, it now has a handful of boats, fewer than 20, which are among the biggest in the world. It has taken its entire industry and concentrated it in 20 supertrawlers. It is to the credit of Ireland that we have maintained a fleet of 2,200 vessels. If I were to travel to Italy, Spain, Greece or even Norway, I would find an industry dominated by large numbers of small vessels. My normal job is as head of fisheries and training in BIM and has been for some time. I am looking at the 2013 report. In that year we provided 142 grants for fishing vessels. Last year we provided 1,500, of which I would say 95% were for boats under 20 m.

We introduced the new safety scheme to provide life jackets with a fitted locator beacon, I hope for everybody who goes to sea. There must never again be a tragedy like the one in Waterford which involved the loss of three brothers.

Every fisherman can avail of a life jacket.

As the pot replacement scheme was introduced in 2014, it is not technically covered in my report. I can get the figures for the Deputy concerned, but I give him my personal assurance that nobody was turned down because of bureaucratic issues. We put the scheme in place and the onus on the applicant to swear an affidavit and tell the truth, which we would then honour. If there is a person who believes he or she not been able to avail of the scheme, I assure the Deputy that I will personally look into the matter because it was our absolute desire that nobody should fail to gain access to the scheme last year.