Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will look at it across. Last year and the year before I did do the inshore schemes where smaller boats got €2,500 and large boats got €5,500. I was very conscious of the fuel impact in putting that in place too.

On the budget for next year, over the past two years, we know Brexit has had a real impact. It was a very unfortunate thing which we all worked hard to avoid. It did have an impact on our fishing fleet. Coming out of that, I worked to try to make the best of a very difficult situation by trying to draw down funds in every way possible to support and develop the sector; to support fishers and fishing communities and to build for the future. I put together a task force, including fishing representatives, and it put together many different schemes. I think there were 12 suggestions put to me for different schemes. I do not recall this happening before, but each and every proposal which the sector itself came up with, I backed and accessed the funding through the Brexit adjustment reserve fund for that and put the structure in place to try to find every way we could to pull down funding. By the end of this year, every one of those schemes will have been rolled out and implemented. That meant, thankfully we were able to get a significantly increased budget over the last two years. If I could find any other way of drawing down money I would do that. I took every opportunity possible. It means we are back to more normal budgetary lines next year, which means significantly less of a budget than was there last year because the Brexit adjustment reserve fund is extracted out of it. If you look at any party’s pre-budget submission, Sinn Féin’s included, every party’s budget would be reduced by a similar amount, given that every party is recognising that the Brexit funds are now out of it. They would all have been landing at a similar level, which was more normalised. That reflects the fact we have drawn down exceptional funding over the past couple of years.