Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister and welcome his comments on the question. The first thing to acknowledge is that the CFP, while minor in an overall EU context, is a major issue for coastal communities in this country and throughout the EU. We will not go through the entire CFP today, but there are some specific questions the Minister might address. The first issue is the perception that the current CFP has largely been detrimental to the conservation of fisheries throughout the EU, which will affect fisheries on our coast. I hope the new review will address this.

I welcome the Minister's comment on single transferable quotas. I agree completely that this would be detrimental to Irish fisheries and I hope we will get support across the House for his efforts to resist it.

I propose that the Minister support the idea of subsidiarity or a ground-up approach towards the management of sea fisheries. We have had significant success in the Irish sea fisheries industry with the Celtic Sea fishery, in which there was an industry-led initiative to conserve stocks. We have seen major improvements in stocks based entirely on an initiative that was instigated by the industry, supported by the Marine Institute and the Department, to solve a problem. Much more work on and support for ground-up, industry-led initiatives such as this would be useful.

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