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

No, as we must first know how much money we have and then we must prioritise how to spend it. The industry and stakeholders will be part of the discussion. We should know how much money we have to spend by the middle of the year and we will then put in train a process to decide how we spend it by the end of the year. It would be irresponsible of me to start making commitments before I even know the pool of money. I will certainly give a commitment that we will have serious stakeholder discussions of how the fisheries fund will be spent. That is not unusual, and we have ongoing consultations with the industry every week on how to manage quotas and the fisheries sector generally. This will be an extension of that process. It is difficult to decide a set of priorities unless one knows how much money is there to spend. That is the first decision to be made.

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