Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)

I thank the witnesses for coming in. It is very nice to meet them. This is the first meeting of this committee and I think it will be quite a large and long learning curve, but we look forward to working with them on that.

Even from these conversations this morning, and just going back for years and years, we have consistently heard stories of how Ireland has not been represented well at Europe, that we lost a lot of our fisheries and that we were disproportionately impacted by it. I cannot honestly see a big change in that happening because we are such a small country and because of the business-as-usual approach, as Mr. Burke said. I think that will be what is applied and I think we need to fight for it. As regards even the negotiations with the EU and the UK and the fallout from that for Ireland specifically, there were obviously not mistakes made but maybe negotiations or leverage was not there for us. We are going through a similar process now with Iceland. What would the witnesses like to see happen now specifically as regards Iceland? What would be a good outcome? If the EU came back and said, "We have agreed third party or third country agreement", what would be a good outcome for the witnesses as regards Iceland?