Mr. Michael Desmond:

Basically, we are delegating our survival to the hands of this committee. We do not have an income. I am a shrimp fisherman. The people who traditionally bought my shrimps are not buying them. The people who traditionally bought Mr. Menarry's and Mr. Dixon's crabs are not buying them. Some people do not have an income. We cannot get social welfare. Social welfare for certain fishermen does not exist. However, we are actually running businesses. There are crewmen depending on us. Forget about paying the mortgage; we cannot pay the average household bill if we do not have an income.

Farmers deserve the subsidies they get. They have the single farm payment and their world revolves around forecasts just as ours does. They have the new ACRES payment that came out, the sustainability payment and suckler payments. We have nothing; it is a case of tough luck lads when our income disappears from us. Unless something is done on subsidies, this whole section of the rural community will just disappear in the morning. We have come up with an inshore continuity grant for the last three or four years. Many inshore fishermen now work part time through no fault of their own. To distinguish between those, we said that they would get 25% of the income derived from fishing annually. Therefore, the part-time fishers would just be getting 25% of what they got from the fishing industry.

All coastal TDs in the Opposition agreed with it and they all wrote back to us. Coastal TDs in Government parties stood up in the Dáil and everyone was nodding in agreement, but nothing happened. It is just words and every six months someone will stand up and say "Yes, give it to them; they deserve it." However, all we hear are words without any action taken. That is why we are here today. The Department of the marine will say that it cannot help us because of budgetary restrictions and it just does not have the money at the moment. However, considering that we are providing seven onshore jobs for every sea job, could this committee not talk to the Department of rural development and the Department of enterprise to come up with an immediate fix for us and then afterwards get some sort of annual subsidy in place for us? We have 7:1. In Cornwall it is 15:1 because of a well-managed, sustainable hook-and-line fishery. We should be aspiring to that and not halving the jobs.

Much of the funding that has come from the macro-financial assistance, MFA, and Brexit adjustment reserve, BAR, funds is going towards tourism. People will always say that tourism is very important for jobs. That is true for six weeks of the year if we get fine weather. It is all very well that Günther and Helga enjoy themselves here for a couple of weeks, but they will be gone to Spain next week. Paddy and Mary will be in Australia. There were 24 people from Baltimore and Skibbereen spending Christmas in Sydney this year. They have all left within the past 12 months. By helping us the Government will be helping small coastal communities.