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

I thank the Deputy for this question. I think he knows we have already put quite a considerable budget in place in response to that storm damage, particularly from a construction point of view, within 115 harbours controlled and managed by local authorities. That was a total of approximately €9 million. We are putting a further €14.6 million in place for our own harbours this year. We have also put a pot compensation scheme in place for fishermen who have lost lobster and shrimp pots. To be honest, the response to that scheme, clearly because of some of the restrictions associated with it, is that there have been only 151 applicants, so we are reviewing whether we need to do something further, as I have said previously in the House.

I am anxious to do something more than we have done for this sector. Next week I will outline a new policy framework for the inshore fishing sector, which should have been done in the past but was not done, and which will for the first time put structures in place to give inshore fishermen a voice in contributing to policy decisions.

The reason it is hard for me to give the Deputy an exact answer to his question is that we do not have a clear picture as to what the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund will be for Ireland, so it is very hard for me to make commitments on the back of not knowing what the budget will be. Hopefully, we will know that figure by the end of this month, or certainly by the end of June. The European Commission is finalising that.

We have options to do all sorts of things with that new fisheries fund, but we need to know how much money we have and then we need to work out with the industry how we can best spend it in terms of implementation of the new Common Fisheries Policy and potentially putting a fund together which can support fishermen through difficult periods such as the one we had this winter. I have an open mind on all of that, but until I have a pool of money that I know I can spend, it would be irresponsible of me to commit to spending money I do not have.

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