Pat Gallagher (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy obviously pre-empted my reply. I am not in the business of buying time. After 24 years in this House I am not in the business of trying to deceive anybody. I was dealing with the facts of 2003 and the decision did not result from December of last year. There should be no ambiguity about that and December this year will not resolve it either. It is something which we all bought into in 2003. The 4.8 is a proposal which was made by the south and east fishermen and there are many good aspects to their proposals which I could accept. I acknowledge the work of their chief executive and some of them are quite sensible.

It is a fact that decommissioning is written into the national development plan. It is €8.8 million over the next three years to be approved by Brussels with fairly strict criteria. It focuses on species of fish which must be fished by a limited quota whereas, ironically, there is no quota and no catch limit on scallop fishing. The effort limit is approximately 80% of the effort limit in force in 2003. I acknowledge it is not enough and I would be much happier if there were more days but it is the distance from the fishing grounds that has created the serious problem for us.

I look forward to working in partnership with the representatives of the industry and with Mr. White to try to overcome the difficulties. I am the first to acknowledge that fishermen face serious difficulties and I want to work with them to find a resolution. I took the only decision that could be taken which was to introduce a number of days between 25 May and 15 June and another series of days have been introduced from 15 June onwards to ensure continuity. I also considered the consistency of landings and the interests of processors.

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