Mr. John Menarry:

On the committee, it got to a stage where we were having a meeting, things were agreed at it and at the next meeting things would have changed. When we asked about slides that were up on the screen we asked how did that happen and we were told that we had all agreed to it. Things were changing between meetings. They were agreed at one meeting and changed at the second meeting. We were told that the majority had agreed on it. We reached out to the Minister and the Department at the time to express our concerns but we were not listened to. I would not say we were bullied. We are big and bold, but when you are a minority on any group, you get overtaken. We were told that was what the committee had agreed, and when we could not work with it and there were disagreements on the policy we stepped away from the committee because we felt it was doing us no good. We reached out to the Minister and the Department when we did that. They came back to us just before St. Patrick's Day 2024. The remaining committee members, both NIFA and the national inshore fisheries forum had stepped away from the committee. We were at that meeting with departmental officials. We expressed our concerns. We were asked by the principal officer of the Department to come back within a week, because in their words, there was "urgency". We wrote back with our few points. Any of the options we gave are in place elsewhere. We asked for an independent chair. There is already an independent chair on the Celtic Sea herring management committee. We asked for a few things like that and we heard nothing until October when the same principal officer came to a quota management committee to announce the herring fishing arrangements for that year. When I asked how they came about I was told they were based on submissions made. I asked by whom, and we were told whatever was submitted by what was left of the committee and both NIFA and the NIFF. At the time I was not certain as to whether perhaps we had made a submission earlier in the year but I found out after the meeting that we had made no submission, so it was basically what was left of the committee or whoever else decided what it was going to be. We have still not had a response to the suggestions we made following the meeting in March.