Mr. Michael Desmond:

I will answer the question on closed fisheries and Mr. Menarry can talk about the north west herring advisory committee and the brown crab. The EU never asked Ireland to ban wild salmon fishing or bass fishing. Ireland did that because of lobbying from the tourism industry and hoteliers from Athlone, Killarney and wherever else. There was no organisation to stand up for inshore fishermen at the time. It is the same for the pelagic stocks. We do not have a quota for pelagic stocks because there was no one at the table to represent us. In fairness, the EU has brought in a law requiring producer organisations to be either an inshore PO or an offshore PO. To become an inshore producer organisation, 80% of an organisation's membership has to operate vessels of 12 m or less in length. All the other POs are for those operating vessels of 24 m or more in length so, under EU law, we are the only PO in Ireland representing inshore fishermen. Even though those organisations say they represent inshore fishermen, they are not allowed to. There was no one to argue the point because we were not at the table back then. Salmon and bass were fished in west Cork and salmon was also fished in Donegal. There were thousands of people employed all around the coast long ago. Thousands of anglers are now allowed to catch them without a problem while we are not. It is ridiculous. Instead, we are eating farmed salmon, which everyone knows is nowhere near the same thing. We have probably lost hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs in coastal communities because of the taking of these fisheries.

There is nothing to stop the Government from reopening this. At the time it was a moratorium. Bass fishing was stopped. English and French boats are fishing bass off our coasts now. French boats are actually pair trawling for them, and I cannot go out and shoot a net or catch a bass with a rod and line. Every bass we eat in restaurants is coming from Turkey or Asia. It is crazy. That deals with the closed fisheries. Mr. Menarry will talk about the north west advisory herring committee and the brown crab as he is involved in that.