Mr. John Lynch:

We in the Irish South and East Fish Producers Organisation recognise the stability the new EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement has given us. It gives a certainty to businesses and for people who intend making investments in the future, which at this stage is very important. We also recognise and are confident that there has been a realignment of the sanitary and phytosanitary regulations and hope that this will allows us to re-establish the land bridge and the landing of live shellfish into the UK for transport back into Ireland as a European Union member state for onward processing. That was stopped post the initial Brexit and I made a lot of statements about it during the intervening five years. Therefore, it is encouraging for us to see those sanitary regulations being realigned and we hope it can happen as soon as possible.

In saying that, we did have massive losses amounting to €43 million of quota annually being transferred from Ireland to the UK as part of the TCA. That will be ongoing for the next 12 years after next year up to June 2038. We see that as a huge loss for the catching sector, which runs up to almost €800 million, and in nephrops where we transferred 14% of our nephrops quota to the UK as part of that agreement. That has amounted to almost €50 million over the five years to date. That will continue and those loses will continue. As my colleague said, the BAR funding did, in some way, give temporary assistance to alleviate some of the financial loses but it really has not helped the industry to readjust to the new reality. That new reality is that the fishing industry is struggling because of consolidation where we decommissioned almost 66,000 tonnes of vessels. In all, 39 vessels were decommissioned and that has consolidated the industry to a point where it really is struggling to support itself. It is struggling to support the service industry and it is struggling to keeps its processors supplies. That is causing huge issues all around the industry, all at a time when we are starting to face into the reality of having to rebuild our fleet for the energy transition into the future.