Mr. Patrick Murphy:

I would like to thank Senator Lombard for saying that this is very important. It is really important that this committee takes on board what we are saying on behalf of all the industry. We feel that this is of real importance for our country going forward, for the fishing industry and for our coastal communities that depend on it. It is their life blood. There will be no second chances at this. If we do not secure, as Mr. O'Donoghue said, access to get into these waters to catch the fish, our fleets will not be able to catch the fish anywhere else. They cannot increase, under relative stability, their quota. They cannot say that they will catch the fish elsewhere. They cannot do so because it will impact on the maximum sustainable yield, MSY. We cannot just go into one area and fish out the fish. The scientists will say that the stocks will be damaged.

If we cannot spread out, get in there and get the fish, and since England is looking to increase the amount, somebody will have to pay that back otherwise there will be overfishing. That goes back to relative stability. I differ slightly from my colleague, Mr. Sean O'Donoghue, on that matter. Arguing over the crumbs, as we would refer to them in our industry, in one of the richest waters in the world, does not make sense to us. We have the raw resources there but we are not allowed to catch them for historic reasons. As Mr. O'Donoghue said, we need to be careful if we renegotiate in that our EU colleagues will use their numbers to tell us to go back to the old days. They will say we are not getting it, that there are more of them and they are taking our resources whether we like it or not. I think that is very dangerous language. That is one of the reasons England pulled out. That is why it is putting, as Mr. O'Donoghue said, fishing in the top five of its markers to see what its success rate will be from leaving the European Union even though trading in London for a couple weeks will be more than it will ever receive from fishing. It is still using that to measure its success when it leaves the EU. That should not be lost here.

As my colleague, Mr. Casey, pointed out, this was a big issue for the coastal communities. They are areas that are no longer alive. When I started fishing in 1988, the biggest problem in Baltimore, where I fished out of, was available berthage. One could not get to the pier. There were boats four and five out. If one goes down there today, the place is a ghost town. Three or four boats are all that are left there. As Mr. O'Donoghue said, 500 boats will be taken out of our fleet if we do not get the access. That is a quarter.

One has to understand that it is not just fishing. If there are not the facilities and not enough boats coming in, the services will die as well. It has a knock-on effect. Coastal communities will be wiped out. It is happening already. I do not agree that we should just forget about renegotiating our fishing rights. The fish are in our waters. If we were able to take our waters back, as England is doing, we would have no problem. Our fleet would be quite happy. There are plenty of fish there. It is really important this committee stresses that it is of considerable importance that we have somebody there negotiating on this. We should have a voice there. I cannot understand why we do not. No other country in Europe would accept it. Some 44% of fish being caught by EU fleets is being caught in Irish waters, and we have nobody at the negotiating table. It does not make any sense to me.