Mr. Andrew Kinneen:

To respond to Deputy Mac Lochlainn, I take the sincerity of his observations. I want to put on the record that we would not want to tar everybody with the same brush. We have challenges with some operators and we must be very vigilant and take every care to ensure they do not circumvent the legislation and, in effect, become unfair competition to those members of the industry who are doing their work lawfully and within the rules.

The Deputy expressed a difficulty in regard to the belt and braces approach in terms of protection of weighing machines. That is based on the good advice we get from the NSAI and other technical experts. In that case, we are protecting the weighing instrument from interference by an operator. In regard to the two flow scales that are on the equipment on the pier in Killybegs, we have been advised by the NSAI that they are state-of-the-art with regard to how boat fish can be weighed. Those same group of experts and our own independent research into this area tells us that good and all as those devices are - they are very good in that we can download example logs to see if there has been any tampering or unusual patterns in the way fish have been weighed - we have been advised that that machinery, even the best on the market, is still vulnerable to physical interference and if not properly set up can be vulnerable to offline interference by electronic Wi-Fi-type read-outs. I will give a specific example. We have been informed that the weighing instrument will weigh what it is being passed over it, but if you have the means to tamper or adjust the belt-feed of the fish being put on the machine that gives you a capacity to distort the capacity of the machine to weigh accurately over time. That is just one example. We have been also told that if you put physical obstacles or devices on the belt-feeder coming to the machine it would have a similar effect on the accurate weighing of it. Those are the two things of which we need to be vigilant.

With regard to CCTV, we very much appreciate that we can monitor these weighing scales with closed circuit television systems, but equally, and not with everybody but with some operators, we have had difficulty setting up those cameras such that they have sufficient viewing point of the weighing instrument, the meter recording the fish going over the weighing instrument and the portion of conveyer belt feeding the fish to the instrument. We have some work to do with the industry in that regard. I am heartened by representation we have received from the industry that it is happy to engage with us. We will be doing some of that work this week. On the question that everything is fixed and we are super vigilant and all over this, unfortunately Deputy we are not. It is the unlawful operators that are setting the challenge for us and creating the difficulties for other operators who are trying to do their work and work lawfully. It is a complex area. We will always try to exercise and meet our responsibilities proportionately and appropriately. We are in a process at the moment to try to re-establish where we should be in terms of monitoring the industry. All good regulation comes with co-operation. Where somebody does not to want to adhere to the law there is nothing much we can do. We are mindful of the level of engagement we need from the industry to make this a success.