Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

Regarding the latter points, as I mentioned earlier, the IUU regulation has been adopted at the Fisheries Council.

Regarding a level playing field, we secured a commitment from Commissioner Borg that he would examine a specific proposal from Ireland that would help strengthen the tools available to coastal states such as Ireland to control fishing activity in our exclusive fishery zones. Ministers are seeking in particular that the coastal member state has access to the quota limits applying to any Community vessels fishing in its waters. Currently, our authorities do not have access to get the relevant details on a vessel from another EU state. That is a lacuna in the EU regulations and it is one of the proposals we put to Commissioner Borg.

Deputy Penrose asked about decommissioning. The Minister of State, Deputy Killeen, announced a week ago that the offers have gone out regarding the decommissioning scheme.

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