Mr. Cormac Burke:

It is clear the SFPA, as I said a moment ago, is a disproportionate force in relation to the industry it is tasked to oversee. Some figures that even a layman can grasp are that in Ireland there is one garda for approximately every 360 citizens, whereas there is one SFPA officer for every six Irish fishing vessels. Conversely, if we were to allocate fishery officers to fishing vessels in the same ratio as gardaí to the general public, there would be five SFPA officers in the entire country.

Taken in pro rata terms compared with other fishing nations, this puts Ireland as one of the highest in Europe and raises many questions among those in the Irish industry, who are demanding to see similar numbers of fishery officers to those in much stronger fishing nations, such as Spain, France and the Netherlands, compared with Ireland. These figures are held by the SFPA's bosses, the European Fisheries Control Agency, EFCA, but are not made widely available for public viewing.