Mr. Patrick Murphy:

Mr. Seán O’Donoghue has set out very clearly the approach that we need to adopt if we are going to undo what is a devastatingly bad deal for our country. The Hague preferences were designed to mitigate the damage to coastal communities when quotas were cut. If cuts were to be made to ensure the sustainability of stocks, the burden of those cuts would be mitigated or lessened for the country in whose waters the fish were located. That was an acknowledgement that, as I said earlier, the fish are in Irish and UK waters. If one looks at maps of Irish and British waters, one can see the continental shelf, which is one of the reasons we have so many visiting fishing fleets in our waters. They come here because the fish are here. Again, it is hard to tell my fishermen and members that not only are they giving up fish but the fish in our waters are being used to pay the bill for other countries. That is an added stress that we have to endure.

Deputy Michael Collins asked a very relevant question earlier. If this deal goes ahead as we fear, it will lead to job losses. We cannot have a fishing industry that does not have enough fish to catch. The regulations will force us to engage in illegal, unreported and unregulated, IUU, fishing. It is difficult enough with the small quotas that we have to keep the fleet going. I remind members that in 2006, we had 280 vessels over 18 m in our demersal fleet but now there are only 164 such vessels on the register. How many of those boats will have to be sacrificed? Those boats represent jobs, real lives and real communities and that fact keeps getting lost in the discussion. A sum of €43 million might not seem like a lot of money in the greater scheme of things but as Mr. O'Donoghue said, it will mean the shutting down of coastal communities. It will mean the loss of jobs and the closure of factories. The herring industry has already been decimated. We have given up all but 1% of Irish Sea herring to the UK. Nobody else was sharing that fish stock. That is what we gave up.

I wish to return to a point made by Deputy Pringle earlier. Most of the vessel owners I represent are also operators and crew members. We represent all of the different segments of the industry. I started off in the inshore segment but have a different role now as CEO of the Irish South and West Fish Producers Organisation. We have inshore members as well and as part of the task force will be representing a multitude of other stakeholders in the industry. We will be representing people like my father, for example, who operates an angling boat and a ferry service. We have everybody's interests at heart. We represent the coastal communities of Ireland, not just the fishing sector because we are all linked together. Many fishermen do not earn enough from the inshore industry and have to do other jobs like small farming and so forth. We are all linked together and are all in this together. This deal will devastate coastal communities. Mr. Seán O’Donoghue must be listened to and we must act immediately.

We are asking the committee to pursue the ideas and the strategies Mr. O'Donoghue has clearly outlined. This is not new territory; it has been done before. We are begging your good selves at this stage to follow on from this. It is not just today. It starts today, I hope, and we move on from there.