Ms Sinéad McSherry:

As the Deputy said, these are operational matters for the SFPA and I cannot comment on them, but I can speak generally to the processing industry in Killybegs. As he said, we met him there in September on probably the finest day of the year. On what we can do to support the processing industry, he said himself that we have built a state-of-the-art facility at which vessels can land and discharge their fish. The capital processing scheme under the BAR put many millions of euro into processors in Killybegs in the form of capital investments, diversification and innovation, and there have been some very successful projects there.

What is challenging the processing sector at the moment is the raw material, not in the rest of the processing sector, given it imports a lot of the raw material when it is not available, but the pelagic sector wants to depend on fish landed directly into Killybegs. There are a couple of issues there, as the industry has told us. A number of Irish boats are choosing to land elsewhere. There is an attraction for other fishing vessels from other member states, or even third countries, into Killybegs because the capacity and facility is there. Again, they are making business decisions based on price and cost.

There are a lot of things we can do, including working with the sector to promote its capacity to process. As for Ireland's compliance with the control regulation, the control function is outside of remit and I am not able to speak to the operation of that, but it is acknowledged the processing sector’s lack of raw material is seriously challenging it. The investments that have been made brought state-of-the-art equipment and capacity into those factories. It will be about working with the industry to attract other landings and, indeed, Irish landings back into Killybegs, because some Irish vessels are choosing not to land and that is a matter for discussion even within industry.