Mr. Micheál O'Mahony:

There is not a meaningful denominator to describe it but the answer is that we would try and get to them on a risk basis and we see particular risks with those types of ships. We do try to ensure that the Naval Service does get to them when they are in Irish waters at least once per season, but it would be in the order of ten to 15 inspections per year. I can get exact numbers of inspections for the committee but in round terms, there are two broad fishing seasons in which they are present in Irish waters, namely, at the very beginning of year and at the very back end of the year, which effectively is one continuous fishing season that straddles the calendar year. We try to get to those types of vessels at least once in those fishing seasons. At the initial implementation, the landing obligation was in pelagic fisheries. We risk-assessed particular compliance risks on those vessels at that time and we had a specific targeted patrol where we got to 14 of those vessels in a six-week period. This occurred in early 2015 and the weather was a lot better than in the instances we have spoken about. We did a round of them all. There is a finite number of these vessels and we got to them all at that stage. It is, however, done on a risk basis, according to resources, and according to the weather conditions. The decision on whether or not it is safe to put a RIB in the water and to board those vessels 200 miles off Killybegs is an operational decision made by a naval captain.