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

It is important to say that but regardless of the pressures we must have a level playing field for everybody. I need to enforce the rules in order to be fair to every fisherman in the same way. One of the proposals - the Deputy expressed concern about this previously - coming into the negotiations is that when stocks are data poor, in other words if we do not have sufficient data to draw proper conclusions, there is a proposal in the case of some stocks to apply an automatic reduction of 20%. That is something I will oppose.

If we are to take the hard decisions to protect stocks on the back of science that suggests we need to do so, that is one matter, but we are certainly not going to ask fishermen to make significant commercial sacrifices by reducing quotas in the absence of science.

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