Dr. Susan Steele:

I thank Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan for his questions. Some of these questions were touched on earlier. As it will not take long, I will go to some of them again. The first question asked concerned the control plan. The SFPA drafted and consulted on a control plan, and specifically excluded pelagic landings in this regard. We logically took that decision to consult without pelagic landing as they were the high-risk scenario singled out for the enhanced controls within the Commission implementing regulation. The intention was to submit a control plan to deal with the current issues that the demersal fishers are having. These issues have been raised in this committee regarding weighing prior to transport.

We went through a written consultation process and we also had several meetings with the representatives of the industry. The authority has now decided that pelagic boat landings greater than 10 tonnes will be included in the control plan, and we are prioritising the development of a revised plan. In that revised plan, we will acknowledge the specific risks which have been identified and that led to the Commission’s decision to revoke the previous plan and provide enhanced controls. This is not going to be an easy process but we have already engaged with the Commission and we will continue to engage with the Irish desk in the Commission to move the process forward. This will have a high priority and an internal team in the SFPA will be working on this process. The aim is to ensure that the plan provides the assurances the Commission requires and that the SFPA, as a regulator, requires to minimise the risk of systematic manipulation of weighed pelagic catches. We are aiming for a submission as soon as possible but the Commission review time will require ten weeks following submission of the documents. I hope that assists in providing some clarity on that point. We had one intention originally, but we have changed that following on from the consultation period. We have indicated that to the producer organisations and we are now indicating it to the committee.

Regarding the Deputy's second question on the processing and weighing of fish, it is important to state that the onus and responsibility is on the operator for the weighing of the fish. We put a great deal of work into the communication of this aspect. Again, if we have not dealt with questions on the website or if information is not available there, and in the same way as I responded to Deputy Michael Collins, we are not far away from Deputy Christopher O’Sullivan at all and we are happy to meet him at any stage. We are happy to sit down and go through the questions posed to him when he has been out in the ports and harbours and to provide clarification on anything he would like. We would be very happy to do that.

We have laid out the situation with the processing and weighing of fish as clearly as we can on the website. We have also taken questions which arose during meetings with representatives of the industry and posted relevant answers into a frequently asked questions, FAQ, section on the website. A huge amount of proactive work has also been done in the ports by the SFPA and the National Standards Authority of Ireland, NSAI. We are very grateful to that organisation, which has been working with us as we are assisting the industry to come into compliance in this regard. The message we gave earlier was that the weighing is done on the sample weight. For most species, then, there is a sample weighing. Fishery products are weighed on landing in accordance with the sampling matrix. The figure resulting from the sample weighing on landing is used for the landing declaration, transport documents, sales notes and take-over declaration. It is for-----