Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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I welcome Mr. Keatinge to the committee. As part of our consideration of the report the issue of FLAGs cropped up, and very few of us understood what they were about. I thank Mr. Keatinge for giving us an insight into how and under what structure they are operating. The funding is relatively small when we look at the entire coastline of the country. I presume the structure of these would have been provided by the current CFP. It is funded by the European Fisheries Fund, EFF. Why is it only in the last two years of the CFP that the FLAGs are being established, when the CFP is expiring at the beginning of 2015? We have an opportunity to get proper funding for these FLAGs with the incoming CFP in 2015, similar to the way the Leader funding is going.

The model for Leader companies is changing and coming back under a local government framework. The south-west FLAG has a very impressive membership. There are fishing interests, aquaculture interests, environmental interests, food interests and a member from the existing Leader company, but no public representative to oversee what are in effect public funds. In light of the move by the Leader companies to go back under the local government model - one of the arguments for this was that it would give public oversight or transparency to that funding - will the structure for the FLAGs will be examined?

There are many ways in which BIM could enter into partnerships for the purpose of funding. There are possibilities in the area of retraining, upskilling and diversifying the skills that are available in the sea fishing industry for use in the offshore exploration industry. Even though BIM has a hands-off role in respect of projects, I think Mr. Keatinge is underselling the whole thing if BIM does not get involved in that area of retraining and upskilling.