Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Kehoe and he is right in terms of the amount of technical assessment and work that has to go into getting our position as strong as possible and to fighting our corner and getting the best outcome possible. The roles of BIM, represented here today by Mr. Dominic Rihan, of the Marine Institute, represented here today by Dr. Ciaran Kelly, and of my own officials, including Dr. Cecil Beamish, Ms Josephine Kelly and the team, are important. A massive amount of work goes into this in advance of each year to try to ensure that we can fight our corner in every way possible when we get to the European Council. Much work goes into the preparations that go on in advance of that at attaché level at European level too.

It has significantly changed since Brexit happened. That has changed the pitch significantly. Ireland shared the majority of its fish stocks with the UK. Previously, that meant that we were all at the December Council meeting together when the UK was a member. We were there together thrashing it out, coming to a conclusion and having that negotiation and discussion at European Council level. Since the UK left - last year being the first time this happened - there now must be negotiation with the UK in advance of the EU member states coming together of the December fisheries Council meeting to finalise the position. Much of the discussion and negotiation is held with the UK on those shared stocks in advance of us coming together in December. That is still ongoing at the moment as I speak. We do not know yet whether there will be an agreement with the UK in advance of the December Council meeting taking place this Sunday and Monday. If there is not an agreement, we will have to set provisional TACs for the first quarter of next year based on the scientific advice and the maximum sustainable yield for each species. If there is an agreement, we can step that out and finalise it at the Council meeting next weekend.

Obviously, it is a different process now. The Commissioner keeps in close touch. The Commissioner, the Commission officials, my officials and I are all participating at European level in terms of our team there, feeding in our key priorities to that UK-EU negotiation. As matters stand now, we are not clear whether we will have agreement between the EU and the UK before next weekend.

Hopefully there will be, but it is a significantly changed situation compared to the situation pre Brexit. I thank Deputy Kehoe for his contribution and for his good wishes.