Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 April 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Fishing Industry Losses Due to Recent Storms: Discussion

3:20 pm

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Providing €10,000 to each amounts to €10 million. If I thought there was a snowball's chance in hell of getting €10 million from the Minister, I would be the first person to pound down his door. If he is doing it out of the current budget, we will not get €10 million if we ask for it but there is €1.5 million on the table and we are not even taking it. What are the biggest things we could tweak? We will take responsibility. Is it the receipt system, the limit on the number of pots, or the system of cash upfront and the receipts later? I suspect it is a mixture of all. In the case of some people, the cash is not the hardest problem and other people are strapped for cash. It is useful for us because we must undertake private deliberations on this to have some sense, within those parameters, of the biggest barriers to people applying for what is on the table, €1.5 million.