Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That means there is less capacity in whitefish and more capacity in pelagic but presumably there are quotas for both pelagic and whitefish and that the quotas are there because the capacity of the fishing fleet, and most boats' capacity to catch fish, far exceeds the quota they have. The reason for quotas is that the capacity to fish far exceeds the allowed quota, so I do not consider that to be a valid argument.

To move this forward, a proposal has been made. When one looks at the MSO requirements, replacing timber boats with steel boats and so forth, there is a very valid case. It is only a small segment but that is because most people moved to steel boats in the past. Is the Minister willing to move this process forward by some means, and not wait for some PO to come forward with a proposal? I do not believe he will get agreement among the producer organisations, POs. I believe they are wishing for the Minister to take the initiative here, to be brave and say he will start the process. Would the Minister consider writing to each PO to say that he has received this document, that he is anxious to find out from them what their response would be to the document submitted and whether they would, with or without conditions, support or object to the proposal involved, which basically is bringing tonnage and kilowatts from the whitefish fleet into the polyvalent segment?

As I said, this might be very limited; it might be 10% or 20% of a polyvalent boat. It is not about bringing it in wholesale as it could be limited. I believe there is an onus on the Minister to start a process that brings this issue forward and forces the POs to say "Yes", "No" or "Yes, with amendments", to this, so at least they do not have a knock-out blow on this process before it starts.