Dr. Cecil Beamish:

I will do my best to answer all of the questions in the order in which they were raised.

It is important to set the context. For the many people involved in Brexit, it is hard to be certain about what one is dealing with. The scenario to which the UK Government agreed and which it is working to have adopted in the House of Commons, to which the European Union agreed and which the Irish Government supports is that in fisheries there would be a transition period for the remainder of 2019 and no change in 2020. We will operate as we have heretofore under the Common Fisheries Policy. Total allowable catch, TAC, quotas would be set in December 2019. The United Kingdom would be outside the door, but the quotas would be set and apply to it for 2020. By mid-2020, the negotiations on the future relationship will have reached a certain point, including on the arrangements to apply to fisheries, but at the end of that year a decision would have to be taken on whether the transition period should be extended for a further year to allow the negotiations to be concluded. That is the central case in the context of the main approach that is still being pursued. In the event that this will happen, nothing will change immediately. This could be the position on 1 April and it is what everybody is working towards. However, there is a lot of uncertainty. In the event that there is no agreement, there might be an extension under Article 50, which means that the United Kingdom would remain a member of the European Union. Therefore, the Common Fisheries Policy, CFP, would apply and things would continue as normal for the period of the extension, whatever it might be. They are the two scenarios which might mean that there would be no change.

In the event that there is a disorderly or no-deal Brexit, technically and legally, once the United Kingdom is no longer a member of the European Union, the Common Fsheries Policy will not apply. The United Kingdom will become a third country, in the same way as Norway and Iceland, and there will be no automatic access for EU vessels to UK waters or for UK vessels to EU waters. However, the geography will not change and the United Kingdom will still need to trade. It is likely that some discussion will take place. Therefore, there will be a need for an arrangement governing how long and the point at which a prohibition on access would be implemented.

The second measure in front of us made by the Commission is based on the possibility that the United Kingdom would offer reciprocal access arrangements in 2019 on the basis of the TAC quotas agreed to last December. For the remainder of 2019, it would offer reciprocal access arrangements. The second proposal would create, on the EU side, a legal framework whereby we could allow UK vessels into our waters, while EU vessels would be allowed into UK waters. While technically the United Kingdom would be outside the European Union, access on a reciprocal basis would be granted in 2019 and we would operate under the existing TAC quota regime. That is one possibility in the event that there is a no-deal Brexit. The proposal to enable it to happen in the event that an offer is made and agreed to with the United Kingdom would apply to 2019 only. In that event, there would be no need for a temporary cessation and so on. It is also dependent on timeframes because many fishers are seasonal, or their locations are seasonal. All of the mackerel quota will have been caught. Traditionally the sector has been dependent on catching a large proportion in the UK zone west and north of Scotland. The catch is already in the factories. Therefore, the impact on the fleet in 2019 would be limited. We are not talking about it being to the fore in dealing with the issue of cessation.

On other stocks, stocks are not managed on the basis of national areas and have not been within the European Union. The stock ranges across the areas west of Scotland that are included in the UK zone and ours. It might well be the case that vessels could avail of their quota entitlements in our zone.

It could be that fishing activity could continue and it might be, if that was a migratory type of stock, that it would not have a big impact.

There are other stocks based on discrete grounds and if fishermen are off those grounds and there is increased effort on the grounds in our zone, that would be spatially limited and it could have an impact. That is where we might want to ease the effort on that ground. It is all about when this reality will become true and at what point it would need to be done. It would not necessarily have to be done on 1 April and it is not that everybody would stop fishing on 1 April but rather that they would just have to fish in European Union waters. The other issue is the extent to which other fleets would increase fishing effort in our zone. For some things that could happen and for others it does not really make economic sense because of the size of the boat or other opportunities in French waters, etc. There is no script for this and we are trying to work this out and plan for the scenario.

It is quite complex. There are approximately 100 stocks shared with the United Kingdom. There are biological units straddling the United Kingdom and Irish zone, and no matter what happens, they will have to continue to be shared and jointly managed if we are to avoid damaging the stocks. Whatever future scenario arises, whether the UK is outside the Union or in transition, some sort of management arrangements would have to be worked out between the UK and the EU to manage those stocks. There is no point in one side conserving the stocks while the other side is damaging them. That does not work in fisheries. We have models and we do things with Norway and others where we share stocks.

People asked what would happen to the UK's quota. That quota is an entitlement to fish a certain portion of the stock. The UK has generally indicated that it would stick to those arrangements for 2019 and that it would only fish that amount. The EU entitlements would be the same and that is the most likely scenario. There would be negotiations after that as to what would happen but it is not the case that a lot of quota becomes free. It does not work like that. We would be trying to manage the out-take from a given stock divided among people and it is not just that some additional quota can be shared around. If we are taking 100% of what is biologically sustainable to take currently, we cannot share around another 40% and take 140%. That would be a road of mutually assured destruction that we do not want to go down. In the short term quota does not become available to anybody per se. Some in the UK fishing industry have an obvious ambition to take a bigger share of the stock and that has implications but that is a little further down the road. For 2019, quota entitlements probably will not change.

If the UK leaves the Union and the Common Fisheries Policy, there will not be automatic access, according to the UK. That is just a fact. It does not mean the UK will not decide perhaps to grant reciprocal access for 2019. We do not know how long the position of no access will exist. It is not the case that the UK is without problems as it needs to access the market and have relations. It also has many things that impacts its position as well. That is the general position and we are trying to deal with and prepare for a variety of scenarios but a number of them involve no change.