Mr. John Menarry:

I thank the Deputy. On the subject of the north west herring advisory committee, from the outset there were issues around the interpretation of the Minister’s policy, and amendments made by the then Minister, Deputy McConalogue in 2023. There was a “them and us” perspective on the interpretation of it. We reached out to the Department on several occasions to ask officials to come to a meeting to explain the policy because we had a situation where the chair at the time was emailing about it and getting phone calls. We asked about one phone call and where he got his information and we were told he could not remember who he got the information from. The last time we discussed quota management I asked a principal sea fishery officer in the Department of the marine. All it will take to get that committee back is for one representative at the Department of the marine to attend its very first meeting after it reconvenes and put on the record what is meant by what is in the policy. We can move forward from there but we cannot have a situation where one group says it is this or that or "I think it is this or I think it is that". All it will take is on official from the Department of the marine to attend for one hour and the case will be closed. That official can say it on the record and we are happy to move forward from that.

On the issue of the brown crab, it is the most socioeconomically important stock in Ireland. We can talk about the worth of the mackerel, but if the mackerel disappeared in the morning, outside of 50 RSW vessels for six weeks of the year, it would have zero effect and virtually undetectable consequences for the inshore sector but it is seen as the gold standard and that is all we ever hear about. Brown crab is fished by 90% of the inshore sector and that is down to lack of opportunities.

That leads me to the Senator's question about diversity. We do not need to diversify; we need to regain access to the stocks we have been excluded from. We had access to mackerel. There was a polyvalent allocation of mackerel of 13%, and ministerial policy has privatised that for 27 vessels, leaving 2.5% of that 13%. When I say 2.5%, that 13% is 100% of the polyvalent allocation. We get 2.5% of that 100%, which leaves approximately 200 tonnes for the rest of the polyvalent sector. We have 400 tonnes of a hook and line mackerel fishery. That is a small amount and not enough to make it economically viable for most of the fleet because factories that can process up to 1,000 tonnes a day. They would have the 400 tonnes done before dinner time. It is not viable for the factories with a larger scale. That limits a lot of the market for that product. When it was last reviewed by the Minister at the time, we had a situation with north west herring that under 10 m vessels were excluded from any track record regardless of whether they had a track record in the fishery. We had a case of two vessels, one under 10m and one over 10m fishing together, and the vessel over 10 m fulfilled the same criteria as the under 10 m vessel. However, the over 10 m vessel got so-called track record in the fishery and was allowed access to quota, whereas the under 10 m vessel was limited to 5% of the overall quota for the entire polyvalent sector. Some 40 vessels can access that. We are not asking for diversification, we are asking for access to what we had access to before ministerial policy changed it. That is all we need.

Many of our issues are Irish-based and are to do with the Minister. They have to do with the interpretation and enforcement of policy. We do not have issues at European level that the larger vessels might say they do. Many of our issues could be quite easily sorted out in the morning if the political will was there. We are not looking to take massive chunks from any sector. We are talking 3 or 4% of any quota as regards mackerel. What we had before was 40% of herring fisheries and it was the majority of the inshore fishing vessels that fished it.

We do not have to go that far back in history to when there were no large vessels in this country. Everybody started out small. Some got big, and fair play to them, but the inshore sector has always been there.