Mr. Enda Conneely:

This goes back to the Island Fisheries (Heritage Licence) Bill 2017. What we were trying to do was allocate a small bit of the national quota in that. It is within the member state's gift to do that. We cleared this with the Commission back when that was done, and it agreed it was fully compliant with the Common Fisheries Policy rules. It went nowhere then. It is a member state issue and the Minister can allocate quota. This goes back to the point we were trying to make earlier about the track record, which is not environmentally sustainable either because it rewards the people who catch the most fish, rather than those who catch the best quality fish with the least damage. It is a perverse way of doing it as it makes people create track record. That was done in the past and I think it is going to change because it has led to where we are at the moment.

Going back to Article 17, there are lots of levers the member states can pull that they have not pulled. I am not 100% sure of this - Mr. Bonner might know - but I believe the reason the heritage licence Bill was not allowed through was essentially that it was against the Common Fisheries Policy. The Commission said the Bill was fine and Ireland said it was not and threw it away. Ten years later, we would have gone ahead with a lot of the data gathering and built up the resources we had. You could have new people coming on board. Everybody starts on a small boat. Even if somebody goes out in a kayak, they start fishing. Some people like it and some people do not and those that do will go into it as a career. These days especially, with the way we are with food security and short supply chains, fishing ticks all the boxes we need to tick. That is an area that could be revisited.