Mr. Cormac Burke:

That is a big question. Lest there be any grey area or confusion on this subject, I would say the relationship between the senior management of the SFPA and the fishing industry could only be described as toxic. This largely arises with good historical reason from a deep mistrust of the organisation by fishermen and an apparent strategy of criminalisation and victimisation by the authority in question. The industry has experienced this agency displaying a level of arrogance in presuming that the entire fishing industry, catching, processing and retailing, should exist solely to support the existence of the SFPA and not, as it should be, the other way around. With the Irish fishing fleet reducing in size by almost 40% in the past ten years, one would expect that due to there being fewer boats, smaller quotas and fewer landings, the fisheries monitoring body in comparison would also have reduced in size. Yet, we see a staff increase of over 400%, with the total SFPA employment numbers reaching approximately 300. It is currently still advertising available jobs. The need for these increased numbers of monitoring officers is being justified by including even the smallest punt landing a couple of lobsters to now come up with the latest figures of an astonishing 132,000 landings last year.