Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will be very brief. I acknowledge the Chair and his courtesy towards me. I have been in and out of this meeting today.

This has been a very useful debate on the issue of the mackerel quota itself and where we are going. It has shed light on the issue itself. Without doubt there is a conflict of ideals between some organisations about where we should be going with the industry. From the presentations I have read, the actual quotas are historical to a degree. They have been gathered up over time.

The year 1983 was mentioned. That was the exact time that milk quotas were brought in. We have had that debate on another industry regarding share of quota and who had it, what producers had it, and the movement of the quota. It is a very divisive topic. It was very important for the agricultural and dairy industry that it was freed up and made more flexible to improve the industry and allow it to move forward. I am not saying we should free up the quota itself. We cannot do that because of environmental issues, but the flexibility between who produced the quota on the agricultural side of things was helpful in the long run for the industry itself.

Today we have a debacle between the north and the south, to be frank about it. How do we deal with that? From the agricultural point of view, we have seen monopolies, such as that in the beef industry, which have been unhelpful. We have seen these issues materialise over the years. Are we in a situation where we might create another monopoly in the fishing sector? How best can the sector be developed on that scale of operation? Should it be based on one or two manufacturers or with one or two entities from either north or south? We are looking at another issue, that of single farm payments and how they were increased in recent years. That has been the kind of move that has been made on the agricultural side of things in a European context. I am concerned that if we do not have the same movement on the fishery side of things, we will end up with a monopoly similar to that which we had in the beef industry. That is a major worry. I want to ask the witnesses for their ideas as to how we can avoid that monopoly, or a large entity controlling the entire quota itself, and what is best for the industry going forward.