Ms Norah Parke:

I came to this meeting at very short notice and I was not aware the mackerel issue was going to be discussed. I will not go into the ins and outs of it because Sean O'Donoghue has already dealt with it very seriously and in great depth as part of the consultation process, so I will not go over all the whys and wherefores regarding how we arrived at this particular situation. There are very strong economic arguments to be made for not following through on what has been asked for. The processing plants finished on 1 March, but the same happens in Killybegs. The season finishes and that is the end of doing that particular lot of work. The economists would soon come up with the answer as to whether it was feasible to spread it out over more processing plants dealing with smaller quantities. I will not take up my ten minutes talking about something that has been very well dealt with already. We just do not have an answer as yet as to where things stand.

There are two ways of looking at the role of fishing in keeping a viable rural community going. We have the huge problems which have faced us in the very recent past, such as Brexit. This requires immediate attention because it is a very serious situation which faces not just the fishing industry, but the entire country. There are also the systemic and endemic issues that have held fishing back and have been part of the decline of fishing over a very long time. These issues need to be addressed with a more organic approach, changing the whole thinking and the whole way of integrating fishing into our communities.

We have infrastructural and educational problems. Fishing in rural communities outside the main centres such as Killybegs, Castletownbere, Ros a' Mhíl and those sorts of big hubs of fishing - in the small areas that rely on small boats fishing inshore - needs to be tackled in a very different way. I would hope that we could perhaps discuss that and come up with common solutions in a meeting such as this today.