Mr. John Lynch:

I thank the Cathaoirleach. The opening statement I provided to the committee speaks for itself, for people who have read it. There are huge issues in the pelagic sector and I will let my colleagues elaborate on that in a few minutes. The scale of the reductions in the total allowable catches, TACs, in the pelagic sector are catastrophic for the Irish fishing industry. There is no question about that. It is the same for the processing industry. If you follow it through, the economic impact of it is really bad for coastal communities and operators around the coast.

Our organisation concentrates more on demersals and nephrops. The fact that we now have six stocks in our area that are on zero TAC advice means that our stocks have declined, all while being fished within ICES advice and within MSY. How much more we can we do? We are fishing within the advice. We have made improvements in technical measures. At this stage, we need to look at a different way of rebuilding. The potential losses for us in the Celtic Sea are €3.9 million if the zero advice is followed. We would encourage that bycatch TACs are sought for these stocks to allow other fisheries to be pursued, in particular the nephrops fishery, where we do not have the advice yet. It is due out at the end of October but a negative advice there would be really painful for our sector. The Irish Sea stocks have a potential minus of €1.25 million and there too we will be dependent on bycatch quotas to keep other fisheries going.

The cuts are so severe this year that to have any stock rebuilding, or any type of effort reduction to accommodate a stock-rebuilding programme, would definitely need subsidies. It would need a lot of supports for the fleet and the processors who depend on that fleet, similar to the structure we had in the BAR funding after Brexit. Things are so serious at the moment that this type of structure will be necessary.