Mr. Eamon Dixon:

Regarding people queuing to get into it, they are actually queuing up to get out of it. I know that many of the TDs here represent rural communities. Fishing is like farming. Mr. Desmond touched on farming earlier. Fishing is vital to the rural communities in which it is based. It goes all over Ireland - Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Limerick, Clare, Cork, Waterford, Wexford and right along the east coast. It is really important to all those counties. There are small fishing communities in every village there.

Their kids go to the schools. They spend money in every single one of those towns. They buy their food and most of their stuff in them. They are not going elsewhere to spend their money. If that is lost in the next couple of years, it will leave a huge hole in rural Ireland.

I know an election will be coming up in the next 18 months or so. I have listened many times to Members of this House say how important rural Ireland is to them. If it is, it is time they recognised the issues we have as fishermen in rural Ireland. You cannot say, on the one hand, that you love rural Ireland and then forget about it on the other. If you do, you will lose that. If you forget about something, that will get lost. All political parties, and everybody else, have the best intentions to look after these people but we really need Members help to ensure that is done in the future.

Issues such as better access to quotas, including for mackerel and herring, are vital. We need diversification. As Mr. Menarry said, some of that was quota share that we had, which was taken from us by ministerial decision in the past. That could be reversed in the morning. Members sit around every day making these decisions and they know this can be done. The inshore sector needs a little more of a quota. Some of the members will have seen the presentation we put to the Department for hook-and-line mackerel. It includes the figure that over 95% of the Irish fishing fleet is made up of inshore vessels. That is clear in BIM figures, not ours. That leaves only 5% on the other side, yet we have less than 1% of the mackerel quota. In herring, as Mr. Menarry said, we have in or around 5%. That is not viable. If our families are to survive in the communities we live in, fishing has to be viable.

Members would not give anyone they knew less than 1% of quota. If we were a minority group getting a quota of 1%, the committee would say something. We are the majority, however, accounting for over 90%, and we are still getting 1% of quota. People would find that very hard to live with in any country in the world.