Mr. Michael Desmond:

I thank the Senator. I will leave it to Mr. Menarry to talk about the quota. As to whether the three of us are likely to leave, it is quite possible. Recently, I applied for and got a fisheries local action group, FLAG, grant for marine tourism and got it. I am seriously thinking about packing fishing up because it is just not viable. It is not that the fish are not there or that I cannot catch them. Rather, what I used to do before was to tie my boat up in winter time, bring in my pots and then go fishing for herring and sprat with Mr. Foley or his partner. I now find myself fishing pots all year round. That is because of Government policy. We have this pressure on our shelter stocks because of Government policy. There is no other reason. We were stopped from fishing bass, salmon, trout, eels and pollock. What are we supposed to do?

There will be complaints in a few days' time - it will be from the Save Our Sprat group - that a fellow made a statement the other day that inshore fishers do not know what sustainability was. It is not our fault we are put into one pressure zone of stocks. It is not by choice. The Government forced us to do that. There is no strategy for inshore. In 2019, the then Minister, Michael Creed, came up with the inshore strategy. It was launched in 2019 and was to run until 2024.

There was a huge launch and fanfare and pictures in the newspaper. We never had one meeting about it since and we are now in 2025. There is still no strategy for inshore. It is very easy to say the moratorium on bass or salmon can be lifted in 2025. That takes some of the pressure off shrimp and crab stocks and little by little, gets the fleet to diversify into different stocks again. We were sustainable fishermen when it was left to our own devices. I fished scallop for a couple of months of the year, herring for a couple of months of the year, salmon, shrimp, and everything worked fine, and then the Government started getting involved and destroyed the whole lot. It is very easy for the Government to fix that by reopening the fisheries, diversifying and giving us a fair share of the quota like we used to have. To answer the Deputy's question, unless things change, I can see myself packing up shortly.

Mr. Menarry is better equipped to answer the question on privatisation.