Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

As Deputy Penrose said, I had a long and detailed meeting with the Federation of Irish Fishermen in his home county of Westmeath a number of weeks ago. In the meantime, both the Minister of State, Deputy Killeen, our officials and myself had the opportunity to meet its members on a number of occasions and both before and after the Council of Ministers meeting.

One of the issues highlighted to us is that the fisherman is always price taking and that in recent times the actual price they have been getting for the product has decreased whereas for the consumer the price of the end product, whether it is in a restaurant, a supermarket or whatever, had increased.

In that regard, following the meeting in Athlone we established immediately a national Irish seafood market initiative, which was one of the issues we put to the federation that day, under the chair of the chief executive officer of Bord Iascaigh Mhara. The remit of the initiative will be to discuss, identify and maximise the opportunities for domestic seafood supply to the Irish seafood market. The objective is to bring the producers, fishermen, wholesalers, distributors and processors together to ensure that the producers and market suppliers communicate with the industry to ensure that everybody gets a fair price in the chain of production and processing.

Shortly after I was appointed to this office I made contact with Commissioner Borg. I had in excess of a 30 minute detailed telephone conversation with him. Subsequently, the Minister of State, Deputy Killeen, and I met him in advance of the Council of Fisheries Ministers meetings. We outlined to him, as Deputy Penrose pinpointed, and others in the House a week ago during the debate, the serious issues facing the industry. We outlined those issues cogently and strongly to the Commissioner at our bilateral meeting. That was followed up subsequently at our Council of Ministers meetings where both the Minister of State, Deputy Killeen, and I spoke about all those important issues.

In view of the fact that as a Common Fisheries Policy we put strong pressure and proposals to the Commission to bring forward an EU funded package of measures, a number of initiatives have been taken. To answer Deputy Penrose's question about when the Commission will come back on the issue, Commissioner Borg said he will come back at the Council of Ministers meeting, which is the 15 July, on foot of the deliberations of the Council meeting a week ago. We let him know in no uncertain terms, however, the serious situation facing so many fishermen.

See this speech in context