Mr. Brendan Byrne:

It is the same rule book. We are working under the same regulations. The problem relates to how each member state or competent authority interprets those rules. This goes back to the point I addressed earlier in response to Deputy Mac Lochlainn. We are all for sustainability and robust regulation. At the deepest point of the recession, the sector I represent invested €2.4 million of our own money, without any grant aid, into building up this robustness. However, there has to be an equilibrium between all those regulations and how we are interpreting and applying them to allow an industry to function. We cannot strangle the industry by overinterpreting a regulation that is applied across Europe but does not hamper factories in Denmark, Sweden or wherever else. We have to compare and contrast that. We land only 15% of the fish caught around the Irish coast; 85% is caught by other countries. What regulation and control is there of that?

I represent the factories yet there are factory ships at sea. There is not one camera on them. There is not one live feed to anything. There is no oversight of them whatsoever, yet the members I represent compete with those people in the open markets of Europe, the Far East, everywhere. It is far from a level playing field. It is all happening in plain sight around the waters of Ireland. If someone can tell me that is fair, I am here to listen.