Mr. Enda Conneely:

The Attorney General will answer the question he is asked. Maybe the question that was asked was not the one that should have been asked. The Commission has assured us that the Bill is a the member state issue. I remember a lot of talk at the time that it was not possible to increase the fishing effort, but this did not involve that. It used boats that were on the register with polyvalent licences. It would not increase the fishing effort. It is about reallocating a small amount of the quota to reintroduce seasonality

If we could get it going on the islands, it could possibly be run as a pilot to see how a fishery might be built up again. It was a big mistake to allow that to die the way it did. We are now in a bad situation with the larger operators, but if only we had done that then. These things do not happen overnight. They happen over a long period and people tend to react when there is an emergency. It is still not too late to get going on this. It ties into Article 17 and into what we are doing with cultural heritage. Any fishing on islands brings tourism. All that kind of stuff has come into this as well. It would have a huge impact and I imagine we could do it rather swiftly with the help of the committee and the Minister.