Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I would like to answer the questions in detail and if any Deputies have specific questions, they should feel free to intervene and I will be happy to answer them.

I will begin with Deputy Browne's comments on what Seán O'Donoghue said this morning. Outside of my Department, most of us involved with fishing would accept that there is nobody who knows more about the fishing industry than Seán O'Donoghue. He is an oracle of knowledge on all things fishing, particularly the pelagic sector but also whitefish. I was a little disappointed to hear him say this morning that this was the wrong approach. However, I understand where he is coming from and six months ago would have agreed with him. His position is that we should concentrate on avoiding catch in the first place, rather than on an obligation to land catch and ban discards. He is right, but that is not the politics of this and things have moved on since that approach was politically achievable. At last night's meeting, almost every member state was adamant that we had to achieve a final date for a complete discards ban. Otherwise they would have walked out of the negotiations.

That is the politics behind this, due to the pressure coming from consumers in countries like Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and elsewhere, who refuse to accept that we cannot come up with an intelligent solution to end the practice of discarding tens of thousands of tonnes of perfectly edible dead fish. Whether these dead fish are juvenile stock, by-catch for which fishermen do not have a quota or whether they are extra fish, the idea that we can continue pumping them back into the sea, as if in pretence that they have not been caught, and only land the amount of fish for which we have a quota, is no longer sustainable. Mr. O'Donoghue accepts that. What he would like is for the fishing industry to be given the chance to use technical measures to their full potential, to increase mesh size, to introduce escape panels and to introduce set-aside areas where there would be no fishing, particularly when juvenile stocks are growing. We have some areas where we have already implemented that type of set-aside at sea and these have worked well. There are some good examples, particularly in the Celtic Sea, of where because of good sustainable management we have seen a significant increase in both tax and quotas because the stock is very healthy there.

The debate has moved on from there. Therefore, as well as doing what Mr. O'Donoghue wants us to do, which is to introduce technical measures that will ensure we are more targeted in terms of the species and size of fish we catch, we must also have a phased introduction of an obligation to land everything that is caught. In other words, there must be an end to discards. We need to do the two together. It would not have been a credible political outcome for us to put off setting a date for a discards ban and trust that we would implement sufficient technical measures to end discarding by being more targeted in our fishing. That was not a possible solution, because things have moved on and powerful countries in the European Union, particularly Britain, Germany and the Scandinavian countries, were adamant. Many of them were, in fact, unhappy with the final compromise that we were not just setting a clear date at the earliest possible opportunity after which there would be a complete ban on discards.

The challenge for countries like Ireland, working with countries like Spain, France, Belgium, Portugal and others, was to convince the member states that if this was to work, we had to bring the industry with us. We need to look at more technical measures, but we must also agree, in order to get a buy-in from the other member states, that we are taking a hard line and that we agree a start date and an end date by which we will have a full ban on discards or a complete obligation to land all the fish we catch in terms of commercial target species. There are some flexibilities around the agreement that will allow for a by-catch and so on, but essentially that is what was agreed last night and that is the political reality of the Common Fisheries Policy position now. The big change in this Common Fisheries Policy round, which did not happen but should have in previous rounds, is that there is a determination now to end the practice of discarding. We can no longer have a situation where the European Union needs to import 70% of the fish we consume, yet we discard 40% of the fish we catch. Nobody can defend that.

Fishermen do not defend that either. They want a solution that will allow them move away from that unacceptable situation and that is what we were trying to do. Last night, I was determined to introduce an approach that would indicate that while we could not do it overnight, we would be able to do it over a five-year transition period. However, in the end, the agreement was for over a three-year period. That may change again in negotiations, but it was as far as the Presidency and member states would go last night. I want the industry to have time and space to change radically the way in which it fishes. It must move away from discards and become more targeted in terms of how we catch fish, through the use of technical measures, and must land what we cannot separate.

If, for example, fishermen are fishing in the Celtic Sea for cod, haddock and whiting, they cannot be so targeted that they can separate the mature cod and haddock because they are a similar size and shape. It is impossible to target those two fish and release one and catch the other. However, it is certainly possible to be able to release juvenile fish by providing escape hatches and bigger mesh nets. I agree with what Mr. O'Donoghue has said with regard to technical measures but I urge him and others in the industry to understand that we have reached a stage where a ban on discards must also be part of the solution, along with the more technical measures. We have a phasing-in period now for mixed fishery or white fishery - pelagic fishery is different and more straightforward - which will give us the time and space to adopt both approaches, namely, what both consumers and Mr. O'Donoghue want.

There is a problem with regard to the maximum sustainable yield, MSY, and third countries. We are aware of what is happening to our mackerel stocks currently off the Faroe Islands and Iceland. What is happening is a disgrace, but we have no way of forcing them to stop that overfishing, which will damage stock for everybody. For that reason, we are trying to progress with the Commissioner efforts to get trade sanctions put in place to force Iceland and the Faroe Islands back to the negotiating table so as to reach a reasonable solution. Such a compromise solution is available on the European Union side. This is what we want in order to save this stock. Otherwise, we will find in a number of years that we will have a dramatic slashing of our budget because the stock will no longer exist. If that is allowed to happen, it will create a nightmare scenario, particularly for the north west because it is so reliant on mackerel. It will also be a nightmare because of the financial loss as mackerel is a hugely valuable stock for the fishing industry. We must do what we can to force a change in the overfishing practice of both Iceland and the Faroe Islands. There is no mechanism to force third countries to respect MSY in the same way we ask our fleet to do it. At approximately 4 a.m. today I was discussing this with the Minister from Malta, as Malta also faces a specific problem in this regard as it shares fisheries with North Africa. Malta is being asked to respect MSY, yet it knows that the countries it shares or borders fisheries with will not implement MSY. I am afraid we did not get a satisfactory solution to the issue last night, apart from the proposal to negotiate with third countries to try and get a better outcome.

A number of Deputies mentioned regionalisation. This is an area where we have boxed clever and have got what we want, namely, that when we can achieve agreement among all member states that are fishing in our area, we can, together, change policy in that area, without having to return to the Commission. In other words, if we want to change fishing policy in the western waters for any kind of progressive reason, we can do that if we get unanimous agreement. The important thing for Ireland was that we did not want a situation, in regional discussions of changes, in which Ireland was against a particular change but other larger countries were for it and they could force a change in our waters that we could not prevent. In a case in which there is not full or unanimous agreement for change, the decision goes back to the Commission, as an honest broker, and goes through the normal process of the Parliament and Council to achieve a decision on a new policy. That is an important insurance mechanism for situations in which, for whatever reason, France, the UK and Spain decide they want to push something through in the western waters, and we are opposed to it because it is against Irish interests. We certainly would not like to see small countries being bullied in regionalised decision-making. We want a fallback position whereby a country can go back to the Commission and say that it does not agree with what is happening in its waters, that it requires intervention at general level, and that it will take it to the Council. That insurance mechanism is important, and we have it in the text now, which is a good balance.

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