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

Yes, or the vessels may have done it before they came here, but the point is that they have paid for swaps and therefore they have a legal entitlement to catch both horse mackerel and some by-catch of mackerel as well. I can only take legal action if someone is breaking the rules and breaking the law. It is a very difficult situation. We are going on the logbook information that we can get on the vessels. I would like to be able to back that up by inspections and seeing what is happening on the vessels. I have made my view known but I do not want to force boardings of vessels in totally inappropriate or dangerous weather conditions. I wish to reassure people broadly, as I have had many communications on the issue, that we do board vessels and inspect them and if we find that people are breaking the rules we bring them in and prosecute them. There is a good example of that this year already.

To give members an idea in terms of the Netherlands, which owns most of the large vessels, it has a boarfish quota of 200 tonnes, a north-west herring quota of just over 1,600 tonnes, a Celtic Sea herring quota of 1,600 tonnes, a horse mackerel quota of 36,000 tonnes, a mackerel quota of 35,000 tonnes and a blue whiting quota of 55,000 tonnes. As most people who understand the fishing industry know, the pelagic sector in Europe is dominated by Dutch-flagged vessels. They are big players in this sector and we sometimes see their boats here, but they have a quota they are entitled to catch. They just happen to catch it in much bigger vessels than most other countries, and that is what is causing concern. Some of our vessels also have the ability to catch huge volumes of fish, very similar to what those vessels catch in a day, but they do not have the capacity to process them on board as well. The vessels are not as large physically but the fishing capacity in terms of net size is very similar.

Ultimately, this comes down to enforcement and reassuring people that not only are we getting information from electronic logbooks, but also that we are putting people on vessels and physically inspecting them, and that we are part of a decision around whether we put cameras on the vessels. There are very mixed views within the fishing industry as to whether there should be cameras on vessels. We are trying to come up with a balance that can reassure the broader public on the new rules of the Common Fisheries Policy in terms of the grading and discarding of fish and releasing large numbers of juvenile fish if the catch has an average size that is too small. That type of activity in the pelagic sector could involve very large volumes and we need to stop it. The industry is committed to that, but we must convince the public that we a control system which is showing that is the case.

It is challenging in very stormy conditions in waters as large as Irish waters, even with the Naval Service on standby, which it is. That is the current position, given the weather conditions.