Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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The next thing I want to talk about is pollock. The Minister will know about Muireann Kavanagh, a teenage girl from Arranmore Island, County Donegal who fishes pollock from a hook and line, which would be the most low intensity form of fishing there is other than using a rod in the river. She would fish for pollock, and it is not just in Arranmore but in different parts of the coast. The inshore sector relied on pollock. I have raised the issue through parliamentary questions. There are some complexities, as I understand it, in that the Minister has to co-operate with other countries, namely, Britain and France, to review this. There is, however, a view in the inshore sector that the methodology was questionable. There is also the issue of the bycatch. To prevent a choke situation, vessels that are fishing for whitefish are being allowed to have pollock as a bycatch. Therefore a degree of pollock is allowed to be caught. Why can some arrangement not be made for people who are using hook and line to have some degree of allowance, some amount of tonnage, given that pollock is allowed to be caught through the bycatch? I want to get some sense of that.

The Minister will have met with inshore fishermen on the issue of north west herring. I would be criticised heavily if I did not raise this today because it is a topical issue at the moment. The issue is that the inshore sector has an agreement for an allocation. It has been an open fishery and the total allowed is 350 tonnes, out of a total of 7,000 tonnes. I want to get a sense of the methodology behind how this is arrived at. Apparently there is about 150,000 or 160,000 tonnes of herring but we are only allowed to catch 7,000. I want to get a sense as to why the exploitation of that fishery is so low.

Most pertinent to the inshore sector is why they are being asked to book in. The Minister met with them, as did I. They called a meeting and I and Deputy Thomas Pringle as well as three local county councillors attended the meeting. There is real concern that what they understood was clearly there in the directive and the regulations means they now have to book in and there is a reduction of something like 100 tonnes in the fishery. They feel that breaks the agreement and the conditions they were operating in. Obviously, they were not happy with 350 tonnes but they were working within those parameters in an open fishery. I want to get a sense of what can be done. Can a solution be found on that issue?

To summarise, why are we only allocated 7,000 tonnes of herring? Can it be an open fishery? Can it be 350 tonnes for the inshore sector? What do we do about pollock for the people who want to fish with a hook and line? Is there some way of finding a solution for a sustainable fishery, a small allocation that will allow them to fish pollock, given we are allowing pollock as a bycatch?

I want to get a sense about how much pollock is being caught. What is the registered catch for pollock under that bycatch arrangement?