Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Having read the proposal, it is true to say that it is aligned to what the Department for Agriculture, Food and the Marine states to be its policy. That point was well made. The screening of an excellent documentary, "Atlantic", highlighted the sense of anger about the extent of our waters that we have given away and the loss of this immense resource.

It is particularly frustrating that the distribution appears to be unfair to Irish fishermen, particularly if we are serious about coastal communities getting the benefit of the resource. The witnesses made a well presented case in terms of a balanced allocation of resources along the coast of Ireland.

My question relates to the fishing organisations, and what has been the approach of Killybegs Fishermen's Organisation, KFO, and so on to its proposal? What is the level of dialogue among the fish producer organisation and Iasc Mara Teoranta? Has there been a forum to thrash out the issues? Has the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine tried to facilitate discussion on this issue or has it been a matter of individual organisations doing their own thing which is not working fairly for everybody?