Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Tá brón orm go raibh mé déanach. I am sorry I was late; I was unavoidably detained.

Ba mhaith liom díriú ar rud amháin ar an gcéad dul síos. Tá sé ráite ag an Aire go bhfuil €1.5 milliún ar fáil don scéim. The Minister has said he has €1.5 million available. He has said that no money has been paid out and 150 applications have come in. Those 150 applications represent €350,000, taking his average figure of €2,400 per head. Some will get €100, some will get €75, some will get €12 and some will get €24. When it is all stacked up it comes to somewhere between €300,000 and €350,000.

As I see it there are two big issues and I would like to get the witnesses' steer on this. In reality the Minister will not rip the whole book up and start all over again. One is the existing scheme for shrimp fishermen and lobster fishermen. Does that need to be reopened without a condition for the lobster people to produce receipts? Does the grant aid need to be increased from 40%? Is the pot limit at 50 and 100 too low? I am consciously not working in the wider scene. In my view the wider scene is really important, but it is an issue for another day. I just wish to focus on the lobster and shrimp case. The Minister has a scheme and there are obvious flaws in the scheme because the uptake is not what he anticipated given that he provided four times the money that has been taken up.

I am very sorry to have been late and I know things have been said. However, I do not see it covered specifically in the documentation before me, which I understand covers the presentations. Would that make a significant difference to that scheme within the terms of that scheme and what the Minister has indicated he is willing to do? He has already admitted with the shrimp pots that he does not need receipts for the old ones. I am not talking about the new ones. From talking to people living along the coast I hear that 40% is way too small and that the number limits are way too small.

In the very short term there is another bigger issue, which is the loss of earnings for those who would have been fishing in that period and were not fishing.

There is a case to be made for these fishermen because the way the social welfare system works for those out of work for so long is unsustainable. Their income from the better times in the year is spread evenly throughout the entire year although they may be out of work for three or four months.

In such situations as we have today my gut instinct is to focus on short-term achievables. If the committee does not do so the short-term schemes will not be put right, the €1.5 million will not be spent and we will not move on to the bigger issues. Huge issues exist which have been very well articulated in newspapers and by my colleagues. These need to be tackled. We have seen over the years that there is a very small number of Teachtaí agus Seanadóirí go bhfuil aon spéis acu sa scéal seo.

The committee has done much work on coastal communities and we are committed to the wider issue of how to sustain them, but there is an immediate job in hand with regard to what is achievable and realistic and would, if we brought it to the Minister, bring some relief. We must maximise our chance of having some success because a whole lot of nothing is still nothing while a little bit of something is still something. This is the equation on which I would like the thoughts of the witnesses. Does one throw the kitchen sink at it and come back with nothing, or does one accept the Minister has set parameters within which are issues which are too tight and we ask whether they can be loosened? This would still be within the €1.5 million budget and would mean it would be spent.

The other issue I raised is between the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Loss of income for bigger boats which would have been fishing during the period is a crucial issue. Rather than trying to solve the entire fishing industry, getting nothing and leaving behind €1.2 million which was put on the table we could focus on these two issues.