Mr. Micheál O'Mahony:

If I could jump in to support Mr. Kinneen there, on this issue of inter-member state transparency there is a specific obligation to maintain a register of infringements for every member state, and that should include the list of points allocated for those infringements for their flag vessel. Even if the infringement was in Irish waters and we were the assignor of the points, the non-Irish national register of infringements should indicate the presence of those points. That is what is written in the regulation.

One of the issues we have brought before this committee previously is this issue of inter-member state transparency. In our submission on reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, one of the items we hit as hard as we could was this issue of transparency. The DG MARE - European Commission - goes to every member state auditing their compliance with the CFP obligations and those reports are only made available to the member states. That is completely different from what is done on the other side of our house, the food safety side of the house, where the European Commission comes to the member state, audits the compliance of the member state and then publishes that on the Internet in the public domain. We believe there should be transparency in those reporting structures. It is something for which we have been looking for some time. We believe that would allow us to then answer more directly the committee's questions as to what is happening in the other member states.