Mr. Seán O'Donoghue:

I will address the voisinagequestion first raised by both Deputy McConalogue and Senator Mac Lochlainn. The key issue now is that legally the UK will more than likely withdraw from the London convention because if it withdraws, it will take full control of its zone between area 6 and area 12. If the UK leaves the Union but not the convention, it will be unable to stop the access available at the moment. Our clear understanding is that the neighbourhood agreements are included as part of the convention. Even if a new Bill is agreed and passes through the Oireachtas, it will be defunct once the UK leaves the convention. There will be a two-year period for this to happen. Why is the Government introducing something new that will have to be renegotiated? However, because we are still a member of the EU, the voisinageagreement cannot be negotiated as a bilateral with the UK. It would have to be negotiated with the EU27 and that is the telling point about this issue.

Senator Mac Lochlainn asked about the Department. I do not know why it did not consult people but I presume the Attorney General advised on the wording of the legislation. I have a huge problem with the wording because it does not reflect what was in the original voisinageagreement, which was found to be unlawful by the Supreme Court because it had not gone through the Oireachtas. I can only respond to the Senator's question by saying they surely got legal advice. They should have consulted the industry on this. This will all become irrelevant if the UK pulls out of the London convention. If it does so, why are we bothering to do something that will be defunct in two years anyway?

On the entitlements issue, fact needs to be separated from fiction. Our track record on mackerel was built up in the 1970s. We had a huge "Klondyke-ing" fleet in Ireland from the beginning to the middle of the 1980s but the RSW fleet built up our track record in this regard in the 1970s. There seems to be much confusion about the transfer of the 14% quota from the RSW sector to the 27 polyvalent vessels. There is no discussion about the other 1,400 vessels. The fact that they gave up quota entitlements can be checked at any quota management meeting. The way we operate our white fish quota management system is we sit down on a monthly basis and we allocate fish to vessels under and over 55 ft.. For example, last year we caught 3,500 tonnes of hake. We sat down every month and we issued approximately 16 tonnes for the over 55 ft. vessels and 8 tonnes for the under 55 ft. vessels. We halved that as the season went on. If the other 1,400 vessels caught the average quota of 5 tonnes per month, they would catch almost twice the quota in one month alone.

In our system, the fact that 27 vessels give up something will mean nothing to the others. We also need to be clear that, on the blue whiting, the polyvalent vessels had no track record whatsoever for this and still got 9% of it. Similarly, with the horse mackerel, they ended up with 11.3%. We have a situation where the polyvalent sector has gained almost 13,500 tonnes of pelagic fish from 2000 to 2014.