Ms Caroline Bocquel:

BIM was responsible for the administration of just under €180 million worth of expenditure. It is worth seeing that in context. That expenditure went into the sector over an 18-month period. It was a tremendous amount of funds to be made available into the system. Almost €50 million of that was to develop the sector. The remaining €130 million was part of the decommissioning of vessels scheme, which was a very difficult scheme but a necessary one to readjust and rebalance the fleet, and various liquidity schemes. The really important one was the development funding of €50 million that went in. An amount of €30 million went to the processors, to modernise their sector.

We now have what we believe is one of the most modern seafood processing sectors in Europe. Some funding went to aquaculture and then other funding went to local communities under an enterprise scheme to locate the blue economy right around the coast.