The Irish fishing industry has been decimated under the watch of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael since we joined the EU, particularly over the past two decades. Things only continue to deteriorate. Last week, a new trilateral mackerel deal was agreed between the UK, Norway and the Faroe Islands. These are countries that have a history of overfishing and we have previously seen them overfish by up to 44% per annum. Industry associations have accused the three countries of artificially inflating their quotas through this trilateral deal, which gives them a massive share of total allowable catch of mackerel. They have warned that this will lead to overfishing of Irish stocks. The Irish seafood sector is heavily reliant on mackerel and blue whiting fisheries. We cannot continue to allow other countries to overfish our waters while Irish fishing communities suffer and people’s livelihoods are lost. My question is this: will the Government speak out against this deal, or will it continue to allow unsustainable overfishing of our stocks by other countries?

I thank Deputy Pringle for raising this issue. I will speak directly to the Minister for agriculture on this specific agreement and ask him to revert to the Deputy on the matter.