Mr. Lorcán Ó Cinnéide:

I am not sure where to start. In terms of the engagement that I had with the officials, despite the limited number of formal meetings, there is an ongoing dialogue, both formally and informally. There is a very high degree of concern. I think that there is a very high degree of awareness at Government level, and that they would support the view that we are taking in terms of the threat that this represents. We are hand in hand in that. There may well be differing views as to exactly what the tactics on that might be. I am fairly sure they do not extend to the renegotiation of the Common Fisheries Policy, CFP, which is another complication subsequent to the fact. We need to keep our eyes on what the issues are here in regard to Brexit and not over-complicate them. All we can do is continually use every forum at our disposal, including this one, and I am very glad to hear the sentiments expressed by members in support of what we are saying.

Talking about the impact on catching or processing, I am open to correction on the following figure but a report commissioned for the Scottish fishing industry indicated that 38% of the mackerel, which is probably the joint largest and most important species and the building block of our pelagic industry, is caught in UK waters. There is not a direct correlation between that and processing and supply, but if one takes that out of the supply, obviously it would have a very big knock on effect on the whole business, including the people who supply the fish, the fishermen, and obviously in terms of the processing plants and the processing industry that has been built up over the last 25 years based on that.