Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Browne, a former Minister of State in the Department, for raising the matter. It gives me an opportunity to update the House on the result the Irish Presidency has achieved, along with the European Parliament and the Commission, on finalising a Common Fisheries Policy, CFP, reform process that is radical, hugely progressive and will ensure that we still have a fishing industry in ten, 20 or 50 years’ time. We now have a very ambitious reform plan that is implementable, but we will need to work closely with the sector and we will need to support it both financially and from a policy point of view in order for it to be able to implement the change.

The level of support for the reform is significant. Yesterday in the European Parliament the Committee on Fisheries, PECH, voted 20 to one in favour of CFP reform. At the Council representative body, essentially of ambassadors, in COREPER, 27 countries voted in favour of CFP reform. When one sees the largest commercial fishing fleet in the European Union, represented by the Spanish Government, and the Green Party in the European Parliament both voting in favour of reform, one begins to realise that the policy is very broad and ambitious and that is implementable and realistic for the industry.

With regard to Ireland’s concerns, we had some specifics that we needed to get out of the reform in terms of protecting certain things. First, we needed to prevent the privatisation of quotas, and we did that. We had that debate a year ago and that was off the agenda because of our stance a long time ago. We have introduced what fishermen want and what the public want, namely, a way to phase out the discarding of fish, which is very much needed. We have protected the Irish Box in no uncertain terms as per the text of CFP reform. We have introduced a regional decision-making process that will allow fishermen to have a say directly in how their fisheries are run locally. Again, for the first time there is agreement on that.

We have added to the wording of the Hague preferences, albeit in a recital, because it was not possible to enshrine the Hague preferences in the CFP reform text itself, as that would have resulted in a vote. As there are only two countries that benefit from the preferences - namely, Ireland and the UK - any politician would know that we could not have won that vote. The next best option was to support and enhance what is currently the case with the Hague preferences, whereby we invoke them in December each year and make the political case for them. We will continue to do that in the future and we will continue to be successful in benefitting from the Hague preferences.

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