Mr. Patrick Murphy:

We have fishermen here who have fished mackerel since they were children. I do not want a them-and-us situation. We made a very solid proposal to the Minister based on the uplift. The Killybegs organisation will not lose one fish of what it had in the previous year. This was an increase our country got in the quota and we asked for that to be displaced, not for somebody else to get more fish but for everybody to get fish. It is a solid basis and we have proven it as it is backed up with over five years of figures. When a boat is given the opportunity to diversify from one fishery into another, it will do so. Some 30 boats were to be decommissioned from our fleet of 176, around 20% of the total, and a one-year pilot project was carried out to see if it was a reasonable way of moving forward.

The Killybegs organisation got increases in the December council in many other areas of fishing where our vessels will lose.

Therefore, they will increase their earnings in any event. They will not lose money. There seems to be an awful way of dispelling rumours in this context and I want to dispel one of them. Both sets of boats fish in the exact same way. There is no difference between the boats. The refrigerated sea water, RSW, boats can chill the fish to give them a better quality and fishermen can get a better price for their fish on the market. The polyvalent boats have the exact same way of carrying the fish. There are no differences between those two fleets, other than perhaps the size of some of the vessels.

To return to the point from which all this stems, and this is the only message that needs to go to the Minister, this issue is about the nearly 400 jobs involved. There are 30 boats with three people, on average, on each of those vessels, which numbers 90 people. As Mr. Greg Casey said, there are three jobs ashore for every person at sea and four times 90 works out at 360 jobs. We can apply that ratio across the country. There are boats up and down the coast between 12 m and 23 m in length and they are facing devastation.

I met Packie Bonner, who is from Burtonport, on my return from a meeting in Brussels and he said that the changes he has seen over the years are frightening. The industry is dying. The boats are leaving. The smaller boats, which are the ones I am talking about, are being wiped out.