Mr. Seán O'Donoghue:

I will address the impact. I did not show it but we have started doing the analysis on the employment effect on the fleet, on the processing side and on the upstream end of things. Based on 2015 data and assuming there is a hard Brexit, there would be a 50% reduction in the net profits of the entire EU 27 fleet, as such. I need to break that down with regard to the Irish end, but one can take it that it will not be far off that, because the Irish are part of that 50%. Similarly, the crews on board the vessels would have to take a 15% reduction, whether they are on a share or whether they are on an employment contract. The net effect of that is that 500 to 600 vessels would go out of business. More importantly, coastal communities would be destroyed. They would be wiped out. Obviously, we need to do more analysis on that but I am just giving the first figures.

With regard to Deputy Martin Kenny's idea concerning the renegotiation of the CFP, I would certainly be very cautious about going down that road, because at the end of the day there will be majority voting here. If we open the renegotiation on the CFP, and considering there are member states which will be hit by Brexit, including ourselves, there could be a double whammy effect. We need to be very careful about how we go about this. Brexit is so serious that we cannot afford to start fighting among ourselves internally and taking the eye off the ball in terms of Brexit. I would be very cautious about going down that route.