Mr. John Lynch:

I can. There is the issue of under-utilised quota whereby in a good few stocks we are deficient in quota and our vessels struggle with the minimal amount they have available to them to catch. Within the Common Fisheries Policy the quotas are divided up and some countries have larger shares than others. In that, many member states do not utilise fully the quota they have available to them so it just stays there uncaught. We are therefore asking, and it is in our Common Fisheries Policy review report and the recommendations are there, that we should develop a better system of swapping or accessing those under-utilised quotas. Also within the Common Fisheries Policy, we would like to see more adherence paid to the Hague preferences that Ireland has and that those Hague preferences should be enshrined on a stronger legal basis within European law within that Common Fisheries Policy because currently we have to invoke those Hague preferences annually and it is always a process to argue for them every year, whereas if they were enshrined, they would automatically be delivered.