Mr. John Menarry:

Other producer organisations go to Europe and bang on the table about fair and equal access. If we want fair and equal access at European level we have to have it at national level also. As has been said, we cannot have double standards. We have a situation at national level in the inshore sector whereby larger vessels exceed national quotas by between 200% and 500% in some fisheries, yet when it comes to other fisheries we have clauses put in place, such as for hook and line mackerel and the north-west terrain, whereby when vessels start to get close to the quota the fisheries close to prevent them from going over the quota. Last year 6a north herring was exceeded by more than 200%. Due to paybacks and penalty clauses imposed by Europe, we have -153 tonnes of quota this year and we will probably not have quota in the fishery next year either because more will have to be paid back.