Mr. Se?n O'Donoghue:

I will address the socioeconomic point as well the interaction. Deputy Mac Lochlainn rightly picked that point from our submission. Every year, not just this year, the Commission produces just the biological aspect of their TAC and quota proposals. They are dependent on the fisheries ministers then picking up the socioeconomic food security aspect, which, in legal terms, is every bit as important as the biological. They must all be taken together. As I mentioned earlier, it is important to understand that the December Fisheries Council is, unfortunately, becoming not totally irrelevant but no longer has the status it used to have. There are about six different negotiations that go on which, by the time we reach the December Council, the Ministers are only rubber-stamping the outcomes. The first of those negotiations relates to the coastal states' quotas of mackerel, blue whiting and Atlanto-Scandian herring. The EU-UK negotiations are huge for us. Then there are the EU-Norway-UK trilateral and the EU-Norway bilateral negotiations, which we have just been talking about. There are a few factors involved. Out of the four, the only one in respect of which a decision has been made is that relating to the coastal states' consultation on the TAC for mackerel, blue whiting and the Atlanto-Scandian herring. There is also ICCAT. This year we will meet the Minister on Saturday night or Sunday morning. Everything is either done or waiting to be done, so we cannot change anything. The negotiations with the industry here have to start in early September because they need to be dealt with in advance of the negotiations to which I have just referred. Covid has been a problem for us because most of us had to use Zoom and could not be physically present at the negotiations. That makes a difference. This year, that is changing. Hopefully, we will have a new scenario and a get-together to start our discussions on all of those elements, because they all fit in as part of the jigsaw.

Deputy Mac Lochlainn did not ask me the question about this, but I am so annoyed about the issue relating to fuel. I know he is as well. This idea of TACs is, to use a pun, a total red herring. There is provision here to compensate for the additional costs. You take what you were paying this time last year and compare it with this year and you should get a subsidy related to that. That is what the others have done. It is quite simple and there is no reason we cannot do it.