Michael Finucane (Fine Gael)

—— and financial resources, only three out of every five calls were answered and, as a result, more than 10,500 people went unheard. It is interesting that 57% of calls made to the helpline related to emotional violence, while the remainder concerned physical violence. Despite the talk about the success of the Celtic tiger, the volume of calls has doubled over the past four years.

Last October, when the Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Fahey, was presiding over the launch of the Women's Aid statistics for 2004, the organisation indicated that it needed an additional €70,000 to continue its work. In response, the Minister of State promised to make the requested funding available through the Health Service Executive. I urge Senator Dardis, as Acting Leader of the House, to take this matter up with the HSE so that the funds can be released to allow Women's Aid to continue providing this valuable service. The sum in question is minuscule in the context of the HSE's overall budget and the spending excesses committed by the health services in the past.

Yesterday, I attended a meeting of the Joint Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources on the salmon fishing industry, in the course of which a number of passionate contributions were made by Members representing coastal communities. Overall, we had a broad and enlightened discussion, although given that the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources had already made his decision on the industry, it was probably post-mortem. In October 2005, the joint committee produced a report on the fishing industry which had a degree of validity at that time, so it would be wrong of us to ignore its advice. There was a sense of realism at that meeting regarding the advice on banning drift net fishing and having a voluntary situation for draft net fishing.

We cannot ignore what is happening in our coastal communities, which are under siege. They are faced with less fishing at sea, quota restrictions and now the added burden of not being allowed to fish for salmon. It will put pressure on other fishing sources.