Mr. Patrick Murphy:

I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to appear before the committee.

We appreciate the acknowledgement of the loss of our colleague and friend, Hugo Boyle. The acknowledgement and the minute of silence the committee gave were much appreciated.

I will start with a bit of information on scallops and why this is a problem. Scallops digest and filter water and in that water there is plankton. Sometimes that plankton creates a toxin in the gut of the fish. Normally they are tested to see that they are within the proper parameters so they can be moved and shipped. For that to happen, those vessels would, as Mr. Lynch said, have to be processed in the UK and only the meat sent back. The processing would be done over there so the solution would be a derogation for those fish to be tested before being processed here. They would be sealed in closed lorries and sent back for processing. That would resolve the problem there, keep jobs and help those boats to be viable in their costings.

On the question of the task force, we welcome that and any engagement whatsoever, particularly with the knowledge base we can see that we all share. We come from different parts of the industry. I cover a number of them so I hope I will be able to contribute to developing something that would mitigate the damage. I agree with my colleague, Mr. O'Donoghue, that this is an immediate threat. We are going to lose fish. We have already lost fish at the start of this year, and each month we sit together and try to share out what we have between our vessels. It is hugely complicated by the landing obligation. If we catch the lowest denominator of fish, it means we cannot catch the rest of the fish because we would be engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated, IUU, fishing. With opportunities being narrowed, it has a huge effect on us trying to earn a living.

We will look into the task force but I think Mr. O'Donoghue has articulated what we need. We need a correct and proper share-out of the burden. We have to understand this burden is not just the loss of fishing from our industry that our boats lose. It is also the fish that we have to pay from our waters. It is hard to explain to the fishermen that they have to leave the jobs that are there not because there are no fish there but because we are giving the fish to somebody else. The reason we are giving it to somebody is else is that they have claimed more fish under zonal attachment, and that zonal attachment means that because fish are in one's waters, one gets more fish. It is a contradiction in terms and it is hard for our industry to be told that perhaps a quarter of those working in the industry will have to leave and, not only that, but future generations will not be able to enter the industry either.

The positive side is that we asked for the setting up of a task force with immediate effect. We have to know what the next measures to be taken are and we cannot wait, as Mr. O'Donoghue said. It has to be immediate because the effects are immediate. We know that from this month's quota for monkfish. We are already looking for swaps from foreign countries to keep our boats fishing in areas.