Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)
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I thank the witnesses for their presentations. Listening to those presentations reminded me of the meetings we had last year on the fodder crisis. There was no space to move in this room for Members and media presence. In an equally big crisis if not worse within the inshore fishing fleet, we see how little attention it is getting, which is quite stark given the impact the recent weather conditions have had on the inshore fishing fleet. To a certain extent as a Member I should take some of the blame for that because we may not have been vociferous enough in raising the issue.

The presentations have made clear how inadequate the compensation scheme offered by the Minister is. It is good to hear that at first hand. It gives the committee ammunition to make representations to the Department after the meeting to try to secure changes to it. The representatives of the Federation of Irish Fishermen have referred to the potential use of the EMFF for compensation. The line fed by Ministers is that the amount of damage done by the storms did not meet the threshold to trigger European funding. However, in this scheme that threshold does not apply. We need to ensure the Department gets in there straightaway to try to find ways to access that fund. There may be a co-funding element which may need to be sorted out. However, if the will is there, the way will be found very easily. For many years I believe fishermen have been missing the will at official level to deal with these problems.

We will probably make contact with the Department after this meeting to raise these issues. We certainly have ammunition that strengthens our argument in making a case to it. I hope we can get a quick reaction to provide money upfront and to alter the levels of compensation. In our later work we will be dealing with the issues of the pot limits and access to social welfare. We will see all the witnesses then in that regard. Hopefully we will be able to get a resolution to this issue in itself.