Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I assure the Deputy that I am and I will be in contact with them. I met them for about three hours ten days ago. I will meet them as soon as I land in Brussels to keep them up to speed. We have a team representing us in Brussels, where the negotiations are ongoing. That team is in close contact with them as well and will remain so. We are aligned and we have the same objective. My only objective is to get the best possible outcome and get as much fish as we possibly can for our fishers next year. I will battle at European level to get the best outcome possible in the context of all the moving parts relating to the negotiations. I will take on board the pooled intelligence and experience on how we best do that. The industry will be engaging with its counterparts. The industry's counterparts in other countries are pushing for a larger transfer of blue whiting quota, which is not what we want. There is a role for the industry in terms of its industry colleagues, to battle and to try to influence what is coming forward from other industry representatives at European level in the same way I will be doing at political level.

On blue whiting, thankfully, the ICES scientific advice for next year is for it to be an 81% increase in allowable catch. As a result, there will be a significant increase in blue whiting catch next year. We will need that and we want to minimise the transfer. Over the past two years, I have succeeded in getting the transfer reduced. It was a good outcome, and we made gains. It is a new game, a new 90 minutes, a new battle and a new engagement. There is no guarantee it will be the same but I will be working right alongside our industry to try to get the best outcome and to ensure that happens. We shall see how it evolves.