Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It may have been mine. The issue of international transferable quotas arises where corporations that own super-trawlers have been able to buy massive quotas, which impacts on our indigenous fishing industry. Is this an issue that has come onto the Minister's desk? Obviously, we have discussed the issue of super-trawlers in this committee and we looked at the challenges of ensuring the catch they report is actually happening, and we looked at the issue of inspectors going on board to monitor this more closely. There are big concerns about super-trawlers within the fishing industry and I would like to hear the Minister's thoughts.

The Minister talked about trying to attract more of the foreign trawlers to land here to the benefit of our processing industry and to have that added value. Is there anything we can do to oblige those trawlers which access Irish waters to land their catch in Irish ports? I was able to tell the Minister that 1.2 million tonnes of fish are caught in Irish waters. I assume that, at some point, every one of these trawlers has to report this catch, whether they land in an Irish port, a home port or a port on the neighbouring island. The Minister might advise us how that reporting is done and how the catch is monitored. I assume it is all under the jurisdiction of the European Union. Is there any way we can oblige or encourage them to land their catch here or to directly connect that fishing in Irish waters with Ireland? We need to do more than just market or encourage this. If we look at the 5% of overall catch that is processed here, we have do much better than that and we have to get more value out of that for our island. I would like to get a sense of all of that.