Mr. Greg Casey:

With regard to the history, the period of six years during which there was a race to build up quota were the six years between 1 January 1977 and 31 December 1982. Those six years were the period on foot of which the 1983 Common Fisheries Policy, grounded on the concept of relative stability, was founded. As I understand it, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has lost the records on catches for those six years. I also believe that in that period, far from there being 23 RSW tank boats engaged in fishing for mackerel in the Klondikers, the Russian factory ships, in Berehaven or in north Donegal, there was a maximum of five. I can give the committee the names of the people who owned them, but I will not say it in an open forum. One of them was in the Aran Islands, one was from Berehaven and one was from north-west Mayo. I will not go further than that.

The balance of the 23 gradually acquired that type of fishing vessel between the coming into force of the 1983 Common Fisheries Policy and the operation of the multi-annual guidance programmes, MAGP, under the 1992 Common Fisheries Policy which directed that the fleets be segmented. Segmentation occurred in private in the mid-1990s. Segmentation of the fleet and the requirement to have it were abolished by the EU in a Council regulation of December 2002. While that was taking place, Ireland was conducting a licensing review or consultation with the industry. That started in the summer of 2001 and it finished in November 2002. Policy directives were issued from the beginning of 2003 in accordance with the Fisheries Act. Issues surrounding the abolition of segmentation at EU level were not allowed to be considered by that review, even though Europe was getting rid of this tank boat, polyvalent, pelagic, beamer or whatever segment one wishes to call it. Europe had decided by that stage that segmentation should have been abolished following 1 January 2003. Ireland has never done that. Not alone has it not done it, it has sat into it and imposed a system of apartheid between segments which has caused or allowed a buildup of enormous imbalance between those who have the entitlement to the 87% of the mackerel quota and the 27 boats that have the 13%.