Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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Go raibh maith agat. I welcome the witnesses. I reached out to the various representative organisations. These include the fish producer organisations, the exporter associations and the aquaculture industry. I advised them that the witnesses would be here today and to give me their feedback ahead of the meeting. The responses make for sober reading. I will go through them. I think we might have another round of questions after this one, so I will go through as much as I can now and I will come back in again later.

I will start with Killybegs. I met recently with the departmental representatives at the opening of the extension to the harbour there. I again visited a producer factory while I was there. I am deeply alarmed at the state of the industry in Killybegs. This community in south-west Donegal built up an impressive industry through its own ingenuity and hard work. Thousands of direct and indirect jobs were created in the local economy in that part of the county. There is now a real crisis there. Hundreds of jobs have already been lost and I am fearful for several companies in Killybegs.

We really need to get to the point on two different levels. I am not asking the witnesses to respond because I am going to talk about the SFPA and it will have to respond for itself. We must, though, get to the point where the landing rules we have are consistent across the European Union. I have data here from the SFPA. We have not even got the figures for 2024 yet and I am really worried about what they are going to show. If we look at those for 2022, however, in terms of fish for human consumption, there was a decline from 141,000 tonnes to 82,000 tonnes. That is from 2022 to 2023. I think it is going to be even worse in 2024. By the way, that was a 66% decline in fish for human consumption. I am quoting from SFPA figures. It is pretty horrendous. We have a situation now where Scottish boats are saying they will not land there in 2025. The vessels of several other countries are already voting with their feet. Indeed, vessels based in that harbour are landing elsewhere too because they just cannot deal with the level of bureaucracy they face.

I visited a factory there several years ago. For the benefit of the Chair and the members, I do not know of any other industry that would put up with what I am about to describe. As the fish are going onto a conveyor belt they go through a weighing device. It is tamper-proof. It has cable ties around it, so it cannot be tampered with. There are cameras on the weighing device as well, and the footage is beamed directly to the offices of the SFPA. There is, therefore, absolute oversight of the weighing of fish as they go through the system. Representatives of the SFPA can land into the factory at any time and ensure the fish on the system are those going into the freezer. There is an absolute and complete level of oversight. Yet this is still not good enough and the SFPA still has these arbitrary rules.

The SFPA has a very important job to do. I want to be very clear about this fact. The authority has an extremely important job to do and we must ensure we meet our responsibilities under the Common Fisheries Policy. We do not want to see overfishing and a wild west situation in this area. This, though, is not what is being asked for. What is being asked for is common sense. As I said, other countries are voting with their feet. They do not face anywhere near this level of oversight when they land at harbours elsewhere in the European Union.

We must get a grip on this situation. We are killing our industry in that area. We had great news recently and it is a fantastic facility. I refer to the amount of money invested. People locally, though, wonder what the point would be of having a harbour if there are no fish to land. Are we just going to become a place for tourism and for cruise ships to land? Are we going to have a fishing industry?

I am asking for urgent intervention. How can we turn the industry around and work constructively to allow the SFPA to do its important job, consistent with the rest of the European Union?