Mr. Hugo Boyle:

On the question on whether we would be happy if the Bill represented the old agreement, I would say "No" in our case. There are a number of reasons for that. As Mr. Crowley pointed out, it is a different world now. Vessels under 75 ft. in 1965 would probably have the same horsepower. Our vessels of 12 m now would have more horsepower than the vessels of 75 ft. in 1965. They are towing much heavier gear and have increased environmental impact on the grounds, and there is the issue of getting room on the grounds.

The other issue is control. How would we control the vessels that would come in? We have no vessel monitoring system, VMS, or reporting in. On a national basis, as far as we are concerned, our vessels - we are mostly talking about small vessels here - are under control. They have quotas that we cannot apply to vessels from outside the Twenty-six Counties. That is unfortunate, because I do not see why any fisherman from anywhere in Ireland should be excluded from any of the waters around Ireland, but that is just life as it is at the moment. The old agreement has gone out the window, as far as I am concerned.

The Bill is open-ended. I think Mr. Seán O'Donoghue pointed that out earlier. He said one could drive a coach and horses through it. I do not know how it was drafted and I am not going to blame anyone for drafting it, but as a layperson, and without the help of our legal colleagues here, one can see that one could almost do what he or she wanted with it. In the old arrangement, as Mr. Patrick Murphy alluded to, on the matter of mussels, the agreement was never fully applied to many vessels. One is talking about the zero to six mile limit. That does not cover all the water from the shore out or all the water in the bays. There is a baseline, and the baseline is normally run from headland to headland. It can run from island to island. We have internal waters inside that baseline, as per section 86 of the Sea-Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act 2006. Inside those baselines, those vessels were not entitled to ever go in. They were only entitled to enter in the zero to six mile limit. We are introducing that again in this Bill. There is a vague area there.

On Senator Mac Lochlainn's question, as he said, all the organisations here at the moment were opposed to the voisinage, and he asked why nobody in the Department took cognisance of that. We were never consulted. In all developments, as far as the fishing industry is concerned, the Department is beholden to consult the industry. It seemed to railroad that particular Bill through. I am not going into the mackerel question, because I do not think it was asked by either of the two speakers.