Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I am trying to recall the exact wording. The court order was that there was a requirement on the State to put the person back into the position he was in back in 2007. The only way we could do that was the way in which we did it. I would caution against using that as a precedent. There were specific circumstances involved, in respect of which we can provide members with the details, if they so wish. That was not, as is being suggested by some, the Minister interfering and doing a particular job in respect of a particular vessel. I have a clear record of not dealing with licensing issues in respect of individual vessels because I am not allowed to do so, legally. That was put in place by a previous Government for good reason and because of the pressures that Ministers were coming under previously to do individual deals in respect of individual vessels. We need to be careful of that. I am not saying I do not have an open mind to suggestions because I do, as it happens. However, I cannot do individual deals in respect of individual vessels; otherwise, I will spend all of my time doing so. Also, I would need to change the legislation before I could do it.

Essentially, what we are talking about here is 18 boats. What we are being asked is that we would allow people to essentially use whitefish tonnage in kilowatts in order to have bigger boats that are targeting pelagic fish. Essentially, we are using whitefish capacity to increase the capacity per catch in the pelagic sector, accepting, of course, that the quota does not change. We need to be careful before we do that. It is not true to say that somebody cannot replace a wooden boat with a steel boat. They can if it is the same size. However, they cannot build a bigger boat without getting extra capacity.

It has been suggested that the pelagic and polyvalent sectors are on their knees but they are not. Some boats are finding the going tough but some are making a very good living now. The people who are looking to expand and buy or build bigger boats are in this category, by and large. It certainly does not suggest a category on its knees if people are looking to build bigger boats. Let us have an honest conversation. I want to try to help the industry to make more money and have as many viable fishing boats as we can in the Irish fleet. I want to get them as much fish to catch as we can. I also have to balance the fact that we essentially have a whitefish and pelagic fishery, which are quite different, and the way we manage them is quite different.

We had a mackerel review in 2010 that was quite significant. We had a herring review in 2011 and 2012. It is not as if we have not had recent reviews in terms of the split and segmentation within different categories. There was a change in terms of the percentage of mackerel that the refrigerated sea water fleet was catching versus the polyvalent sector. In the future, we will probably have to review that again. I would like to see proposals from the fishing industry as a whole so we can get a sense of what the fishing industry is looking for and I can make proposals on the back of that. I understand what they are saying but there are consequences for many other people in making those changes. If bigger boats in the polyvalent sector catching mackerel and herring are facilitated, we would be increasing the capacity for catch without increasing the quota available. We must ask questions as to the likely outcome of somebody having the capacity to catch much more fish but not the quota to do it.