Mr. Miche?l O'Mahony:

I will answer the question about surrealism. No, this is not surreal. It is not rocket science; it is about weighing fish and figuring out how much fish are landed. It should not be rocket science. The fact that we are having a discussion about it is not surreal. This is the backbone of fishery control. The whole point of giving a quantitative, capped amount of fish that fishermen can catch is that it needs a backbone. This is about giving that backbone. There is nothing surreal about that.

I am not sure where the confusion is in option 1, but it is option 1 because it is our recommended option. We believe it will give a very accurate weight and absolute control over quality. There is no limit to the amount of water one could have. The big issue with option 1 is that the water is weighed and is in the tanker before the fish arrive in the tanker. Let us say there are 10 tonnes of water in the tanker. The tanker then comes to the pier-side device, which has been built as a weighing system. It has active de-watering, by which I mean the fish are tumbled between conveyor belts and a huge fan blows the water off them. The conveyer belt has a grid on it so the water can fall through it. Essentially, the fish will be without water for the few seconds that they are going over the conveyer belt. The fish then go into the pre-charged tanker. The only addition to the tanker from its first weighing is fish. That tanker goes over the weighbridge, the first weight is subtracted and a further 2% is taken off that figure to account for any residual water that might be in the gills of the fish, or anything like that. That gives an accurate weight of fish.

The Deputy asked if we are creating an onus. The answer is "No". The first tanker comes pre-charged and the second tanker can get its water from the water that was with the first tanker’s fish. It can be diverted one way and then the other.

The other question was whether we are creating an onus on the vessels. No, the vessels have their refrigerated sea water and refrigerated systems. They have refrigerated sea water.

We need to contextualise this. This is 5% and it is a way of unlocking almost 100% weighing at the factory. That is what we are getting to here.