Mr. Brendan Byrne:

The issue here is that there are third countries such as Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Norway that are grossly abusing the science. The key issue is that those rogue states are still getting full and unfettered access to European markets. Last year Norway sold €600 million of herring and mackerel into the European market at a time when Ireland was suffering because we adhere to the Common Fishery Policy. This goes back to the earlier question. Unless Europe can defend its own members, it is not going to defend the science against the actions of the others and call it out. This is where we are. We are suffering because Europe has been weak. It had a toolkit in terms of market access and trade access but it has failed to do anything with that. Going back to the point made earlier by Mr. O'Donnell, if it was not bad enough that Europe gave these countries unfettered market access, it then proceeded to give access west of Ireland to Norway to fish, on occasions, up to 200,000 tonnes of blue whiting.