Mr. Cormac Burke:

If the committee will indulge me for a minute, I prepared a closing statement that covers that in case I did not get the opportunity to speak to this committee again. I remind members that today's meeting has talked a lot about the SFPA, the imbalance and what we see as the injustice against the industry. It is a lot for the committee members to digest. If they take away nothing else today, I would like them to remember that many people in the industry have predicted for years that there will be some kind of civil war between the industry and the agencies as if it was an impending doom.

Our reality is actually much worse than that. In a civil war, there are two sides fighting but in the Irish fishing sector, there is only one side pushing the aggression. I can tell members it is not the fishing industry. The genuine people of this industry are trying to effect change through the official channels but are being undermined with every effort. This is a pattern that, over the last 20 years, we have seen increasing in Ireland more than in any other EU state, although the European Commission is itself complicit in standing by and watching the administrative abuse of the Irish fishing industry. It plays nicely into the EU narrative of using the resources that should belong to the people of Ireland as a bargaining chip in other EU wheeling and dealing.

Ireland, this Government and this committee must instigate a clean-up campaign of the Irish national marine agencies before they can complain of any injustice or mistreatment of the Irish fishing industry by the EU.