Mr. Ronan Sheehy:

I would like to make some comments. I am from Baltimore, in west Cork, where my uncles operate one of these processing factories. The season is short. Seasonally, they have approximately 60 people working for them, and 25 full-time equivalent jobs, but 25 jobs in a place like Baltimore are vital. These factories are only hanging on, so to speak. That is the reality. Any increase in the mackerel quota to the polyvalent boats will help those factories but much of the commentary on this issue is to the effect that this fish somehow disappears and that it is not available to the processors in Killybegs. Some of the polyvalent boats land a portion of their fish there as well. Four of these 27 vessels are owned in Donegal. Some of them are owned by processing facilities there. This fish will not disappear. There was never more fish processed in Killybegs than there was this year.

There is 1 million tonnes of blue whiting on their doorstep. They get 91% of it and the polyvalent vessels get 9%. Every vessel of the 23 this year had 1,800 tonnes of blue whiting to catch. We had 400 tonnes for six boats of the 27. The idea that all this employment will somehow be shifted out of Killybegs town is just not accurate; it is misleading.

I heard Ms Parke commenting on track records created in the 1970s. Many whitefish track records were created by people sitting in this room and by many fishermen on the south-west coast. That is open season. Every boat on the coast has the same access to that as we have. I refer to the boats which created that track record. Therefore, the à la carteway of allocating quota is not right, balanced or fair. We can do a lot with it.

We operate whitefish vessels in Baltimore, Schull and such places. Last year we could not land a cod in October, November and December. Every one of them had to be thrown back into the sea. This proposal gives 2,500 tonnes of badly need whitefish quota. It has potential to give back 2,500 tonnes of whitefish quota to boats that are struggling. Coming up to Christmas, our guys on our whitefish boats struggle. There is no cod or haddock to land and in some cases there is two tonnes of hake. We want to improve these circumstances with this proposal. It is not fair to sit here and say the fish are disappearing out of Killybegs and we are all going to suffer. There are people suffering right now and we are trying to alleviate this problem with this proposal.