Mr. Dominic Rihan:

The external actions mentioned in the call primarily deal with what is called sustainable fisheries partnership agreements. These are international agreements with the likes of Morocco, Mauritania and places like that. In the last few years, we have had very limited interest in those fisheries due to bad experiences. Mauritania is a very difficult place in which to do business. We made an input into that call at the time. I do not know whether it was a Department call or a Commission call. I talked to the Department about that and it asked us about it. I had an interview with one of the contractors that was carrying out that study. The issue with those agreements is that they could have value to us but because of the political instabilities in many of those places, they are not places in which we want to do business. Also, in a lot of cases, those agreements are very much stitched up by other European countries that have been in these places and spend a lot of money there. It is the usual suspects that have been in those agreements.

There are potentially opportunities there, but they come with a big cost and are not easy. Without a lot of capital and political contacts, they are very hard to get into. The agreements need to be reviewed and changed to allow better access to other countries. There is no doubt about that. It is an issue that has been on the table for a long time. It is something we have looked at and will have to look at again in the future.