Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I will give a brief statement on where we are at. The CFP is coming down to four areas that need political agreement. The first is on discards and how we manage the cessation of discarding fish unnecessarily at sea. Currently, in Irish waters between 400,000 and 500,000 tonnes of fish are thrown over the side dead each year, which is a huge volume of fish. Some are juvenile fish but many are adult, marketable fish, which fishermen do not have quota to catch. That is a guesstimate but this does not only affect Irish boats. Ireland has been responsible on this. We have documented the discards issue for the Irish fleet and it is there for everybody to see but other boats, whether they be French, British, Spanish or Portuguese, are doing the same. We are determined, therefore, to introduce an obligation to land with certain flexibilities and exceptions and we are trying to get agreement on that with the parliament and the Commission and on a phasing in period to allow the industry to adapt and to give those involved the financial supports to help them to adapt.

The second issue is fishing to maximum sustainable yield, MSY. There is basic agreement on where we want to get to between the three institutions. We want to fish to a level that allows the stock to at least maintain its size and there are scientific measurement tools to do that. There are two ways of measuring MSY - biomass in the water and mortality rate among the fish killed and landed. We are trying to get the balance right between those two definitions. The Parliament wants one; the Council wants another. We are writing compromises at the moment.

The third issue is regionalisation. Countries want to be able to make decisions on a regional basis rather than having to go through a laborious, difficult process of codecision between the parliament and the Council. Both institutions want to facilitate that to allow groups of countries fishing in the same areas to make collective decisions that make sense within those areas without having to go through a long drawn out and difficult system and we are again making good progress on that.

The final issue, which is somewhat controversial, is fleet capacity management. Essentially, that is about ensuring the size of a fleet is matched with the available fish the boats are going out to catch. There are some exceptions because some fleets, for example, the pelagic fleet, is tied up for most of the year and then it has an intensive period of fishing. That intensive period more than allows the fishermen to be economically viable and, therefore, the issue is how to manage that because if they fished 12 months a year, they would catch more fish that they have quota to catch. We need flexibilities and management tools that can allow us ensure our fleets are sustainable, economically but also from a fisheries point of view. That is taking a great deal of negotiation.

There are many other issues but they are the four key issues. We hope to come to a conclusion on the CFP by the end of this month. We have a crucial meeting next week. I am going back to the Council to seek a mandate to change what we agreed last February, which was a Council position, and we are making changes to try to accommodate the concerns of the European Parliament and the Commission in an effort to secure a final agreement on the codecision trialogue process. We will have to wait and see where that goes but I cannot keep going back to the Council of Ministers seeking a new mandate over and over again. I have made it clear, therefore, that this is the final time.

There are only two Council meetings left - one next week and the other at the end of next month. Next month's meeting will be taken up with the CAP. We are trying to get this across the line from a Council negotiating position in terms of a final mandate next week and then through the trialogue process before the end of this month to finalise the CFP political agreement, which will then to be voted on in the autumn in the same way as the CAP will need to be voted on when the Commission puts the necessary structures in place.

That is where we are at on the CFP. Deputy Pringle may wish to ask a couple of questions.