Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail)

There has been much discussion in recent months regarding the distribution of herring quota, which has been subject to review by the Department. Both the north-west herring fishery and the Celtic Sea herring fishery provide much needed employment to fishermen and factory workers, particularly in areas like Killybegs, Kincasslagh and west Donegal. The difficulty is that the criteria used by the Department to determine eligibility seem to be extremely selective. The new policy is ultimately intended to ring-fence the fishery and divide the distribution of quota north and south of the country. The proposals would effectively preclude all but two of the local pelagic vessels from the Celtic Sea fishery, fishing out of Killybegs, to avail of any level of quota. They also discriminate very negatively against the smaller vessels - less than 10 m in length - which have been fishing for herring as far back as the 1920s in Donegal and along the west coast.

The fishing opportunity in Killybegs and Kincasslagh will inevitably suffer as a consequence of these provisions. There are processing factories in both those location which provide employment to large numbers of local people. If I understand it correctly, the new policy means that vessels which participated in a fishery in 2009 or 2010 or in three of the five years between 2006 and 2010 will be allowed to enter into the new fishery in future. A large number of the boats from the west and north-west coasts participated in a fishery in 2011, bringing much needed employment to their communities. However, some of these fishermen were only returning to the Celtic Sea fishery after a number of years. These fishermen are now to be excluded completely from fishing under the new policy. The knock-on effect will be the haemorrhaging of jobs in ports such as Killybegs, which is one of the harbours under the control of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine. It will also have a knock-on effect on the shipbuilding, repair and fuel industries and other local enterprises that work out of Killybegs.

My initial reaction to this is one of shock because there has been little or no consultation within the industry, particularly in the northern end of the country, on this new policy. The Department and the Minister appear to have undergone a process of scrutiny and if the policies as I have read out and the criteria as I have outlined are to be implemented, then it is a blatant attack on the fisheries of the north-west coast. It is a blatant attack on the larger vessels, the pelagic fleet and the smaller vessels - that is, boats under 10 m - many of which are operating from the offshore islands. It comes in the aftermath of new bore fishing regulations, which I will not go into now. The distribution of quota, for example, under the bore regulations, resulted in one vessel in Killybegs receiving 15% of the catch of the previous year while a vessel in Cork received 857% of the catch of the previous year. Questions must be raised here about fairness and transparency in the allocation of quota.

I hope the response tonight will be transparent and will show that decisions have not been taken without adequate consultation. The Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, of which I am a member, had requested that before any decision was taken by the Minister he and his officials would appear before the committee. That did not happen. Last week our Chairman invited Department officials to come before the committee either this week or next but the response was that they did not have time and the committee would have to wait until the autumn. That sort of response is simply not good enough, which is why I am raising the matter tonight. I hope some clarity can be brought to the issue. While I appreciate that Deputy Perry does not have ministerial responsibility for this matter, as a former spokesperson in this area, I know he will understand what I am talking about. I hope the Department has provided him with a reasonable response.