Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, and his officials: Dr. Cecil Beamish, assistant Secretary General; Ms Josephine Kelly, principal officer, sea-fisheries policy and management division; Dominic Rihan, director of economic and strategic services at Bord Iascaigh Mhara, BIM; and Dr. Ciaran Kelly, director of fisheries and ecosystems advisory services, FEAS, at the Marine Institute. All are joining from a witness room and are welcome to the meeting. The Minister will have ten minutes to make an opening statement and then we will move to questions and answers.

Before we begin, I must give an important note on parliamentary privilege. Witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they are to give to the committee. However, if they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and they continue to do so, they are entitled thereafter only to qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected to the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given. They are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

I call on the Minister to make his opening statement and ask him to keep it to ten minutes.