Mr. Cathal Groonell:

That was Deputy McConalogue's question. It is a valid question. The first thing that has to be established is who owns the quota. It is very clear in the Department's policy statement who owns it. When one sees the big prices people are prepared to pay for boats with quota entitlements, one must ask what they are buying. They are happy in the knowledge that they are actually buying the quota entitlement. That is a question. It is in the policy document also that the Minister decides how the quota is allocated. We envisage, for example, that the 1,000 tonnes would be allocated to the factory but that the factory would then have to allocate perhaps 100 tonnes at a time to ten boats or 200 tonnes at a time to five boats. That quota would be attached to the boats' licences for 2018. From the factory's point of view, in order to be policed or whatever, that amount of quota would actually have to be on the boats' licences. It is like everything else in that if the Department wants to do it, it can find a way. There are approximately 20 people working in the fish policy section of the Department. If they have the will to do it, it will not be beyond their means to find a way to do it. We only have what we have from our side of the house but they would have access to a lot more. That is a question for the officials. Let me give a very simple analogy. An analogy was made to the milk quota. If a corner shop owner has a lotto licence and is the selling shop, the next owner does not necessarily get the licence. He has to go through the whole rigmarole of applying. I know this from the experience of a friend of mine. There is no guarantee that the new owner of the shop will get the licence. In Rossaveel, however, all the boats were bought. There was no question. A licence that is worth a multiple of the value of a lotto licence seems to be just rubber-stamped and it is said one has everything. There seems to be no real care taken to account for the socio-economic link with the boat and the question of whether it should be allowed go willy-nilly to another area.

There are many ways of looking at this. For the past three years, we have lost substantial money as a company. We we are trying to hang on and we are fighting our corner. We believe we are obliged to fight on behalf of the company. We fight for our own jobs and for our staff's jobs. We are fighting also for the port of Rossaveel. If we walk away, the port will be in a bad way. It will be a marina. That is not good enough. We are fighting on. We are losing money so we cannot hang on indefinitely. If there is no result or change, it will not make sense to repeat it for a number of years.