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

Deputy Wallace has raised a point that fishermen have also raised with me. I asked BIM to put together a scheme that could help inshore fishermen who have lost lobster pots, crab pots and so on. The intention was that the Department would pay 40% of the replacement costs. BIM representatives came back to me with a proposal. They asked me how much money was available and I told them the budget was €1.5 million. I am not getting any extra money from the Exchequer for this but have to take money from other areas in my Department, unlike the situation with the piers and harbours fund, for which we are getting money through a Supplementary Estimate. At the moment, we are committing €1.5 million to this sector. We then had to try to prioritise within the sector. BIM made the straightforward recommendation that generally bigger boats have more pots. That is why we said that we would limit the aid to 50 pots for boats under 12 m and 100 pots for vessels under 15 m, which I thought was reasonable. However, when we go through the initial application of this scheme, if we have not spent the full amount we will look at reallocating the remaining funds in certain cases.

It is too early to say if that will happen, but we have committed to a certain scheme. The reasoning behind it is that, generally, larger boats have more pots; therefore, we wanted to give them access to more funding as in all likelihood they would have lost more pots. That is the rationale behind the decision. There is no hidden reason for it. We thought this was a straightforward way to go, but, obviously, we will re-evaluate the matter once the initial funds have been allocated.

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