Ms Anna O'Sullivan:

The EU-Norway bilateral agreement dates back to the 1980s when it was first put in place. There are a few layers to it. One is that there is an exchange of fishing opportunities. Norway gives the EU a share of arctic cod quota and in exchange the EU provides quota of various stocks. The one of interest to Ireland would be blue whiting. We do not have a quota share of the arctic cod. Blue whiting would be an important stock to us and it is always an important issue in the negotiations to keep that level of blue whiting as low as possible. Both this year and last year, it was kept to a minimum at below the cap this year of 7.4% of the global - that would be the total - blue whiting TAC.

Another aspect of the EU-Norway agreement is, as Ms McSherry mentioned, there is access for EU fleets to Norwegian waters to fish for Atlanto-Scandian herring. There are also other aspects for stocks in the North Sea that would be caught by member states that operate in the North Sea.

There are also other agreements that go alongside that EU-Norway relating to a neighbourhood agreement with Sweden because of its proximity, and also how the fisheries are managed in the waters around Sweden and Denmark in that area called the Skagerrak and the Kattegat which Ireland does not have an interest in because we do not operate there. Our main interest would be in the EU-Norway main agreement which deals with the blue whiting transfer and the level of access for ash.