Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I do not have the specific drill-down detail the Deputy is asking for there but I can get my team to send it to him. There are 1,642 inshore vessels which are on the national register, approximately 1,000 of which are actively fishing. A good benchmark for where we might be at with active fishing is the number who applied for the business adjustment scheme I ran last year and the year before. To qualify for that, you had to show you had 30 days' active fishing or else sales notes for more than €1,000 worth of fish sold. That was the threshold for qualifying. The payments to fishers for that were if your vessel was under 12 ft or 10 m, it was €2,700, and if your vessel was under 18 m, it was €4,700. You would expect anybody who could qualify to apply for that. Just under 800 vessels - 780 or around that mark - last year and the year applied for that. That would be boats that had fished more than €1,000 worth of fish in the year or had 30 days' active fishing, one or the other. That gives the Deputy a sort of threshold of how active those 800 boats were. Any that were under that obviously would not have had €1,000 worth of sales or the 30 days' active fishing, and because of the funding that was being offered, you would be expecting those who would have had it to have applied.