Mr. Patrick Murphy:

I am thankful again for the opportunity to speak. I had a good opportunity at the start and I thank Deputy Mac Lochlainn for his questions. I will follow up where Mr. Lynch left off. Another producer organisation was recently formed and we also work with processors, including the Irish Fish Processors and Exporters Association and its new chief executive, Mr. Brendan Byrne.

I do not want to leave out the aquaculture sector and the fisheries local action groups, FLAGS. When we are on the task force, yes, we definitely work together. We started off with a figure of 6,500 for GT. Can you imagine? I am sorry for laughing, but that is comical because we knew that the reductions were coming. Deputy Mac Lochlainn asked how we can do things and what the positive things we can do are. We use the tools that are there for our country. There is the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries, STECF. Like the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, ICES, the STECF also gives reports and has to do evaluations on the fleets and the performance of the fleets across Europe. As I pointed out, the figures have now changed and, unfortunately, they come very late, so it might be a year or two before we can look at what is happening. It is the same with Covid. We have to move forward in time. We cannot wait.

Yesterday, we were at a committee meeting on the funding for the fisheries and aquaculture and for monitoring and our control agencies. We were told there could be another infringement opened against Ireland and more money deducted from our funds because of issues with the landing obligation. We do not want to move away from what we are talking about, but there are more complications there. We have been before the committee about this before. We lost the right to send our fish to a factory to be weighed. We had to do it on the pier and take the ice off it. There is a lot against our industry but there are definitely mechanisms there for it. There is the Fish Database of European Streams, FIDES, which shows the record of what each country catches in the various quotas throughout the year. If we had access to those data in real time, we could see the fishing patterns of the different countries and we might be able to arrange swaps better with the countries that have more quota that they could not use or carry forward to the next year. We could talk to them about that and see if we could get more of that fish under the rules of the Common Fisheries Policy. One of the pillars of the Common Fisheries Policy is that there are coastal communities that depend on the industry. This is our resource, as Deputy Mac Lochlainn pointed out.

Of the pie we get to take from, we have 15%. I keep putting forward this analogy. Can the committee imagine if we started at zero and the European fleet went to the shores of Africa and came back to Europe and the fleet said it had 85% of the fishing rights and that all the African people were left with was 15% because now they can sell the fish in the European market? There would be a human cry heard across the globe, but it seems to be okay for the Irish people. It is these simple facts that our Taoiseach should take to Ursula von der Leyen and the rest. He should point them out to them and use the examples that are there.

As for the Irish Sea herring, the clue is in the name: the Irish Sea. We are left with 1% of that fishery and the UK has 99%. If any European can stand over the argument that the latter is right and just, they should sit before me and tell it to my face because I do not agree with them at all. I keep saying this: we are told we have to lose on a third decommissioning scheme one third of our fleet. The figures in my presentation were designed and drafted not by me but by scientists within the Marine Institute. I am only copying their work so I am taking that what they have done is correct. We had hundreds of boats in our fleet not so long ago, in 2006, not even halfway through the Common Fisheries Policy, and we are going to be told that if they are successful with this decommissioning scheme, we will be down to a third. That is a third, a third and a third from 2006. I ask the committee to look at the figures. When we go to our Taoiseach and speak to our Minister tomorrow, the committee should tell him it has looked at the figures. The €39 million set out in the task force report that will come back into the fisheries will not make up the shortfall. What will we do? Do we go back to Europe again and look for a fourth decommissioning scheme? We cannot make fish appear from nowhere. The fish are there; we need the quota. It is all about quota to be able to keep our coastal communities going. We have the skill set. We brought the boats to Dublin peacefully. We did so because we just wanted to show the Irish people the condition of the modern fleet we have built up and the families who have worked and risked their lives going out in weather such as has been seen in recent days to earn a living to pay for these boats. The committee has seen the pictures I have sent of two of our members who have spent hundreds of thousands in recent years on boats that are over 30 years of age to keep them compliant with the code of practice so the men can go out and catch fish and compete with the foreign fleets visiting our shores. We are being told to get rid of one in every three. That is stark.