Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Building that consensus about what we need to do and the challenges there is very much what I have sought to do. The reason I set up the sea fisheries task force in the first instance was to bring all of those key voices together to assess the very real challenges that we have and to pool ideas and consideration on how we can meet that challenge and best support our sector in the time ahead. The body of work that was done is a significant one. It was painstaking and challenging work. As was said, it was not a situation that anyone wanted to be in. All of those involved showed the leadership to grapple with the issues that we have, to come forward with suggestions in terms of how we can support the sector with investment and in schemes, and to support the sector in terms of fighting our corner and fighting the battle at European level. The consensus was there and we built on it. That is something I will continue to do and take forward, both in terms of the investment aspect and in terms of the battle at European level. As I said, Ireland was the only member state to vote against the proposals at the last Council meeting. Particularly, as we come now to the fisheries policy review, I will very determinedly work closely with the industry representatives.

I asked the Marine Institute for an update on the most recent, up-to-date figures in terms of our exclusive economic zone, EEZ. In June 2018, in preparation for Brexit, it published a fact sheet on the landings in the Irish EEZ for the years from 2011 to 2015. Under the Common Fisheries Policy, official landing statistics are reported by member states by ICES division, rather than by EEZ. Most ICES divisions straddle more than one country's EEZ. Landings are reported based on statistical rectangles within that. These are small spatial units by which catches are reported, approximately 30 to 36 nautical miles in size. In order to estimate the landings within the Irish EEZ, the Marine Institute advised that the best available method was to sum the data by statistical rectangle for all of these units in the Irish economic zone. For rectangles that fall partially inside our EEZ, the landings inside that EEZ are assumed to be proportional to the spatial area of the rectangle that lies inside the EEZ.

Annual international landings data by species and country at the statistical rectangle level are held by the Joint Research Centre on behalf of the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries. Those data were made available to the Marine Institute for most recent years, but it does not currently provide cache data at country and species level by on landings taken in the relevant ICES areas.

The Marine Institute has access to those detailed data for Irish vessels, as well as international data. On this basis, it is estimated the proportion of total landings from the Irish exclusive economic zone, EEZ, taken by Irish vessels, was the balance taken by vessels from other member states and third countries. That is the basis on which it came to the assessment that, overall, Irish vessels took 35% of landings by species between 2015 and 2019. As I said, the overall percentage of the value of the landings taken by Irish vessels in the Irish EEZ being 38.8% for all species and 36.1% for total allowable catch, TAC, species only. It is work that the Marine Institute will further update. Again, it has to be based on the data. It is something that I have discussed with producer organisations previously, and I clarified the position from the point of view of the information provided by the Marine Institute as well. I am very happy to engage with them on this issue again. I emphasise to Deputy Mac Lochlainn that it needs to be informed by the data.