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

This carries some weight with me. The suggestion that we are just ignoring this is incorrect.

There is also an onus on the people who are putting forward this proposal to get some consensus in the industry. This is a proposal from 18 boat owners. Let me pose one or two questions that have not been asked, which I am surprised about. If we make more capacity available for the pelagic fleet, are we going to confine that capacity to people who are currently in the pelagic polyvalent fleet? If we essentially say that capacity in the whitefish fleet will now be used to allow those in the polyvalent pelagic fleet to build big bigger boats and increase their capacity, what about someone from the whitefish fleet who wants to get into catching mackerel but cannot do so? Do we exclude those people?