Mr. Patrick Murphy:

I thank Deputy Collins for understanding the dire consequences that lie ahead of us. To put this in simple mathematical terms, this decommissioning scheme is based on the gross tonnage, GT, on board a vessel. There is power on board a vessel. One parameter that could indicate an overall value of a boat was chosen. For example, if we take the case of a boat with 200 GTs where the fisherman gets €10,000 per GT, by multiplying 200 by 10,000, we can calculate the figure that will be paid for the decommissioning of that boat. The report states that the decommissioning of 8,000 tonnes is being sought. If we multiply that figure by 12,000, the monetary figure would be up to €96 million. That leaves a shortfall of €31,800 million, which is the figure I put in the report.

To return to the reason we think this scheme is detrimental to our country, it will affect not only our fishing industry but every man, woman and child who lives on the island. Bord Iascaigh Mhara does an economic study on the industry every year. If we are set to lose one third of our boats and one third of our income from those boats, I believe the loss will be much more than the 15% figure the Deputy cited. We have lost access to areas of the English coastline and, for example, Rockall where we had a very important squid fishery worth €5 million. The sums keep adding up. Species are being lost to us and they have not been included in the figures.

To bring it down to figures, we have 16,420 jobs in the industry. If we lose one third of our earning power, it follows that we will lose 5,500 jobs. We have €560 million worth of exports. If we lose one third of that €560 million, all of which comes into the country each year from fishing, we will be down €180 million a year. That is large amount of money to be lost to the Exchequer and the economy as we come out of the Covid-19 crisis when money is being sought to support people.

The Deputy asked if the figures added up. They definitely do not add up. We submitted papers to the task force with respect to vessels and vessel owners gave me permission, if needed, to name them. They agreed to appear before the committee to outline what they paid for boats. They could prove what they had paid to get into the industry. The average amount paid was €14,500 and for the larger boats, the tier 1 vessels, the average paid was more than €25,000. It is not correct for those people to be told they can take less and go. No society should allow that to happen. The report indicates that €12,000 is the maximum that will be paid. Given there is only a budget of €63 million, we can see the intent from the outset. Those figures indicate a figure of less than €8,000 per GT. That is a poor reflection on our country, which has the richest fishing grounds.

We are going to see a third decommissioning scheme to allow, as the Deputy said, boats from other jurisdictions to increase their fishing efforts in our waters, make a living here, land catches all over the country and take Irish fish home to benefit their coastal communities, as is already happening. Having been a fisherman all my life, I find that incredible. In my village of Baltimore, from where I fish, I saw the industry being decimated by previous decommissioning schemes. Given the position I am, it would kill me to look back in the history books and see that our fleet had been decimated in such a manner again.

The crux of the matter is this. The report states €38 million worth of fish will come back into the fishery if we get what is being sought and all these boats are taken out. What happens if we do not get that? We will still have a shortfall. As I said, €38 million is not enough. We are short much more than that. We can see from the figures in the Marine Institute's stock book published in recent weeks that we are down €184 million. Adding €38 million to €84 million does not bring us up to the €250 million figure we had last year. There is still a shortfall. That means boats still do not have the opportunity to stay viable on the water. This leads to difficulties in a mixed stock fishery where they will be up against it to try to remain legal. There is no such thing as stop lights to tell one fish it can go in a net and the another it cannot. We are doing our best with technical measures to leave out all the small fish and allow the juveniles to escape through the T90 nets. We have escape panels, selector panels. We are working very hard to make sure we have a sustainable industry for the future. However, the toughest thing to accept is that this will benefit foreign fleets more than our own people at home. Fishermen will be told to leave the industry and to do so with less money than they put up to get into the industry.