I congratulate our former Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Deputy Mary Coughlan, on her promotion to the office of Tánaiste. It is with regret that I have learned of the departure of our Minister in charge of fisheries, who was an excellent man in that capacity and who put his heart into working on behalf of those in the fishing and food industries.

I congratulate my colleague, Deputy Brendan Smith, on his promotion to the post of Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

We all wish to be associated with those remarks. We hope to have the Minister and the Minister of State with responsibility for fisheries before the committee fairly soon.

We will be in contact. The clerk to the committee will write to them all wishing them well. We may have a small function with them some day if we can organise that.