Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for her response. I note that what was not read into the record from the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine's report to the Dáil was the establishment in the near future of a mutual fund based on funding from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, EMFF. I congratulate the Minister on achieving a €240 million fund for the fishing sector over the next five years and I understand this is twice the size of the fund that was available over the course of the last Common Fisheries Policy period. In the aforementioned report, the Minister mentions this fund will be established to assist inshore fishermen who will be adversely affected through climatic or weather events in the future. In light of that part of the Minister's response, I ask the Minister of State to make a case to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine regarding fishermen who already have been affected. I ask that the Department should consider in good faith how this fund should be established and how contributions will be made to it. However, in effect, I seek some compensation to be made in advance of that to support fishermen who were hit really hard in 2015 and the early part of 2016.

In addition, I ask the Minister of State to ask the Minister and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to allow for administrative roll-over of quota from those months that were affected, that is, November and December 2015 and parts of January 2016, for those fishermen who were unable to catch the quota allocated to them. I ask that the quota be rolled over into the early months of 2016, perhaps up to March or April, to facilitate those fishermen who could not catch the fish they were allocated and to give them a chance to at least claw back some of the income lost during the storm events. A further small measure the Department could take, albeit one that would show good faith, would be a deferral of harbour charges for fishermen who were tied up at the quays for such a long time. While it would not make much monetary difference, it would show good faith and acknowledgement towards the inshore fishing fleet, which has been badly affected. The Minister is even more aware of this point but it is no coincidence that this sector has been particularly hard hit and those in the fleet are practically on subsistence. For example, in respect of the recent controversy on the migrant non-national fishermen in the fleet, it is no coincidence that the vast majority of them are working in this sector or that such conditions are being experienced in this sector.

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