Mr. Michael Kingston:

It is public knowledge and well known in the international community, and a matter of deep embarrassment for me, that we were operating like this as a nation by investigating our own regulation. The maritime community is a small community. DG MOVE, the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport, not marine or energy, interacts with our officials. There is a body known as the European Maritime Safety Agency - we have to report what we are doing to Europe - and it was well aware that this was happening. Everyone in the community could see the failures and, therefore, it wrote to Ireland in July 2015, half a decade ago, and asked Ireland, knowing this, how it was implementing the directive.

Instead of putting our hands up at that point and sorting out the matter, we as a nation fought that position, which was an indefensible one, and arrived at the judgment we have arrived at. I do not know how much that cost but it was money that would have been well spent on what I have just discussed with Deputy Lowry.