Manus Boyle (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State. It is great to have a Minister for the marine now. It is long overdue. Little did I think, when I called a public meeting in Killybegs four years ago, that people from all over Ireland would come to a meeting on the fishing industry. That was the start of us getting the ball rolling on this and getting it into the programme for Government. It is probably the reason I am sitting here today. I am delighted to be here and that the Minister of State is in his role. We have to make progress.

Reform of the CFP was mentioned. We have to hang tough on that. We cannot just roll over and die as we did in the previous one. The Iceland deal was also mentioned. In the previous deal the EC did for us, we ended up with 10,000 tonnes of blue whiting. It was worse than a disgrace. People are coming and fishing in Irish waters. We have the largest waters but get the smallest crumb from the table just to keep us happy. We can never allow that to happen again. My thinking on it is that whoever comes into the waters has to pay the price, which has to be a large price, and probably the best would have to be paid for mackerel. These other countries are giving themselves large quotas. When they have to take a reduction, they are not really taking a reduction. The dogs in the street know what they are doing. They are inflating the quotas for themselves and then saying they are more than happy to take a reduction to make it look good. We cannot afford any more reductions. We need our quotas to go up. To be honest, for Irish seafood and mackerel, we need to be setting approximately 80,000 tonnes or 90,000 tonnes a year to make it viable for people. People are just hanging on by their fingernails. I am one of them and I know many more. We are in Killybegs but I have been around to the other ports. I see it and feel it from people.

We have to home in on and push the Common Fisheries Policy. I was only in Brussels for two days in my life. I was there and I could see it. We have good people out there, but what other countries are doing can be seen. They have people out there lobbying 24-7. We have nobody.