Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to tease out the following couple of points with the Minister. I note that the producer organisations, POs, are not in favour of the proposals that have been agreed at the North Western Waters Regional Advisory Council. Why were the reference years 2013-2014 decided on in regard to how the discarding would operate in the future? I know the POs had a proposal that they would be given advance notice of the areas in which they could fish in and they felt that would be a more manageable and workable solution in regard to discards and meeting the landing requirement.

Around the time the Common Fisheries Policy was being discussed, and as discussed by the committee, there was a great deal of talk around technical measures to ensure that juvenile fish could escape. With the emphasis on technical measures, it seemed to me that time and space would be given to allow the technical measures to develop along parallel lines before the roll out of the landing requirement would be put in place. That does not seem to have happened.

The Minister referred to the 7% or 8% de minimis rules, depending on the area and the species one is catching. As he outlined, according to his figures, some 81% of whiting that is caught in the Irish Sea is discarded and the landing obligation will be implemented from next year onwards. Even with the de minimis rules, that will lead to significant additional landings of whiting. I note that the POs have not faced the fact that additional quota will be required. It was said that it would be a minimum requirement under the negotiations of the Common Fisheries Policy that boats would get additional quota to compensate for the fact that they had to land everything they caught.