I call the meeting to order. I have not received any apologies. I bring to members' attention a note on privilege. Privilege against defamation does not apply to the publication by witnesses outside of the proceedings held by the committee of any matters arising from these proceedings.

Members are reminded of the obligation to be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex, and of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity.

Our topic for today's meeting is Supplementary Estimates for public expenditure, Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine. We are joined by the Minister of State, Deputy Timmy Dooley, who is attending this meeting in an ex officio capacity in substitution for the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Martin Heydon. The Minister of State is joined by the following officials from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Ms. Sinéad McSherry, assistant secretary, fisheries; Mr. Gordon Conroy, assistant secretary, finance; and Mr. Billy Baldwin. They are welcome. While the Minister of State may call on his officials to speak briefly for clarification purposes during the meeting where a specific or technical point arises, the Minister of State is the witness whereas the officials are not. The officials can clarify issues for the committee, but any follow-up questions from members should be put to the Minister of State directly as he is the accountable person before the committee.

The Minister of State has five minutes for the opening statement, then we will proceed to a question-and-answer session. I will take members in the order I see them indicate. We will take five minutes for questions and answers and then we can go for a second round. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I thank the members of the committee for their presence. I welcome the opportunity to appear before the committee to discuss our Department's 2026 Supplementary Estimate, which has been well discussed outside of here and in here. Following the Government's recent decision to introduce temporary and targeted measures to reduce fuel prices for households and businesses, our Department has been allocated €100 million to support the farming and fisheries sectors. Of this, €15 million has been allocated to support vessel owners, fisheries and aquaculture. The level of funding being allocated to our Department is in recognition of the exceptional pressures that rising fuel costs are placing on our farmers, contractors and fishermen and women. The fuel support scheme for farming and fisheries totals €20 million per month for a five-month period from March to July 2026, to be paid on historic usage of fuel.

My discussion with the committee today is in relation to the fishing and aquaculture registered vessel fuel support scheme, as it is defined.

This scheme is designed to assist owners of fishing and aquaculture vessels to offset the increased cost of fuel as a result of the conflict in the Middle East. The scheme will cover the months of March to the end of July, which are a critical time in the fisheries calendar. The scheme has been designed to be straightforward and targeted and I hope that is the case. I know even in saying that there have been some issues with those seeking to apply and we will work to try to find a resolution to that. I have called a meeting of the representative bodies together with myself, officials from our Department and Bord Iascaigh Mhara, BIM, tomorrow to discuss the issues. I want to work with all concerned to ensure that this gets addressed. I recognise that many people were severely impacted by the sudden increase in the cost of fuel.

The scheme was launched on 21 May and is open to owners of fishing vessels, which must be registered on the Irish fleet register at the time of grant application, who must have been actively fishing from 1 March to 31 July 2025. Owners of registered aquaculture vessels can also apply. However, the way the scheme's terms and conditions are set at the minute means they must also be registered on the Irish fleet register at the time of grant application. I recognise that there are some people involved in the aquaculture sector whose boats are not on the fishing register because they are not fishing boats, but who have significant increased costs. I want, insofar as I can, to introduce them into the scheme and tomorrow's discussion with the stakeholders will address that. Obviously, I have to take into account the moneys that are available and all of the parameters. I want to be fair to everybody and that was the expressed wish of the Government. We are working to find a way through it. I cannot make any commitments until I am in a position to do so but it is a live issue and I am very much aware of it.

All applicants - there will be no deviation from this - must be tax compliant at the time of payment and must be in good financial standing with Bord Iascaigh Mhara. Eligibility for the scheme will be based on recorded consumption of fuel for primary production of fisheries and aquaculture products last year. The scheme will operate on the basis of a one-off payment per applicant to cover the full five-month period rather than monthly payments. There will be two rates of payment issued depending on the size of the vessel concerned. Again, this is an exercise to try to assist those smaller operators with smaller boats who may not be as judicious in relation to record-keeping and receipt retention. For owners of vessels less than 6 m in length overall, there will be a flat-rate payment of between €350 and €500. For owners of vessels of 6 m in overall length or greater, up to a maximum of 40 cent per litre will be paid. I emphasise that this is a maximum and is what is required by the state aid rules in terms of the average price increase of the fuel over the period. Depending on the number of people who come in, I am limited by the €15 million at the upper limit. I am hoping we can get as close to 40 cent as possible, but the more that come in, the greater the potential to reduce that. That is our best guesstimate at the moment. What we have seen coming back so far indicates that we will be able to hold close to that, but I just want to put it on the record as a clarifying point. It is up to a maximum of 40 cent.

Applicants are required to supply their fuel usage for the period from 1 March to 31 July 2025, based on receipted expenditure. In exceptional circumstances where, for various reasons, an applicant might not have operated in 2025, we will take everything else into account - that they have been fishing this year, are registered and all of that - and look at their 2024 accounts, but that is a last resort. It is an effort on our side to try to be as helpful as possible. The scheme's budget is capped at €15 million and, therefore, the level of these payments may be adjusted depending on the number of eligible applications received to ensure that the overall budget is not exceeded. The scheme will remain open until Friday, 12 June and payment will issue once all applications have been submitted, checked and verified.

I believe that these measures will have a meaningful impact on the exceptional pressures felt across the fisheries and aquaculture sector and I recommend that they be supported by the committee. I welcome any questions or clarifications that any members may need at this stage. I expect there will be some because I know I have had some queries already. I thank all of the members for their continued help in this matter.

I thank the Minister of State for his opening statement. Unfortunately, I have some negative feedback about the Bord Iascaigh Mhara portal. The Minister of State will have received some of this already, so he will not be shocked to hear it. I understand a considerable amount of money has been invested in these portals and there are a couple of things that occurred to me. We need to think about the typical fisher who is looking to avail of this. We got testimony yesterday from the National Inshore Fisherman's Association, NIFA. An awful lot of fishers do not have emails. There needs to be some on-the-ground assistance for people. NIFA has very limited resources. Its secretary has apparently been working around the clock, but she can only assist people who are members of NIFA. There are a whole pile of inshore fishers who are not members of NIFA and do not have this capacity. I do not think this is going to reach them. What is the Department doing about that? Will the Minister of State extend the deadline? The deadline is Friday. It has to be extended.

We asked about Mr. Michael Berkery and the group that is working on this. We understand that they need the Mulvey report to be published before they can reach final conclusions. I ask for clarification as to when the Mulvey report will be published. That programme of work, which I know the Minister of State asked for, is very important and it needs to be available for everybody to see how we are going to move forward.

I have feedback from the aquaculture sector. People therein tell me that there is no obligation on owners of aquaculture vessels to register their vessels on the Irish fleet register. It is not an appropriate measure of eligibility. They have said that annual submission of returns to the BIM national seafood survey would be a more appropriate measure of eligibility. They are really worried about the ability of their members. IFA Aquaculture would be the main representative body and is having difficulty getting clarification. It has been communicating. I ask the Minister to extend the deadline to deal with issues raised by NIFA. In fairness to him, he is engaging with NIFA on those issues and the issues raised by IFA Aquaculture. It is important that this scheme be available to the maximum number of fishers who need it.

The final thing I want to raise, on which I had an exchange with the Minister of State in the Dáil recently, is this. Yesterday, the committee was presented to on the NIFA proposal around stabilisation and climate adaptation. We are going to write to the Minister of State about it. It is clear that an unprecedented crisis has built up over time in the inshore sector. It is going to need assistance. I compared it to the basic income scheme for artists. There is a course under the Common Agricultural Policy. The Minister of State has said that state aid is a barrier. My party has done some research at European level and we believe that there are exceptional grounds whereby you can make a case to the European Commission for state aid. My God, we have exceptional grounds for our inshore fishers. I am not asking the Minister of State for a very intensive engagement on this today. The committee is going to write to him and we would be looking for him to have a good think about this, see what can be done and go through this proposal. It is an excellent proposition from the national inshore fishers. Those of us who come from coastal communities know that, for years, inshore fishers have said that they do not want to hear about subsidies, they just want their fair share of fish. That is now changing, which tells me that something has gone really badly wrong. If we do not support them, we are going to lose piers and harbours, and lose that heritage that has been there for hundreds of years in those communities.

I have asked a good number of questions. I will not be coming back in again, to be fair to everybody else, so I will get them all done now.

I thank the Deputy. I will try to take them in order. There is an issue with the portal, there is no doubt about that. I have already spoken to BIM.

Officials from the Department have been in touch. In fairness to BIM, it wants to try to migrate, insofar as it can, to an online environment. While I get that, I do not want it to be an inhibitor to getting payments out in this instance, given how that is of such importance. BIM has indicated its willingness to take the data and upload it. Some of this work has started, where it has its agents liaising with fishermen and fisherwomen in ports. I think there is also the capacity to do it over the phone, where possible. That is really important and I know BIM is actively engaged in that.

Tomorrow's meeting will be an opportunity to address any issues that are still not resolved. I heard from a colleague of the Deputy's today that a staff member in his office had spent six or seven hours trying to get some data uploaded because of the fluctuations. That may be a resilience issue with the system because of the number of people logging on during the past number of days.

The bottom line is, I do not want to leave anybody behind. In that regard, I will look at extending the deadline because it is not meant to keep people out. The deadline was the deadline because we wanted to start paying people, and we cannot start to do that until we bring the curtain down on the system and know what the demand is. We will have to look at ways of getting people to at least register their intentions with some kind of picture as to what they will be claiming. Perhaps the documentary evidence can follow later.

I want to close this as quickly as possible, if the Deputy knows what I mean, because I want to be able to get money out for those who have their paperwork in, so let us look at that. I know all of the committee members will do so, but I to encourage anyone who is in the system to get into the BIM portal, get help and work through BIM in the next couple of days to get the payment. Then, we will look at it later in the week. I can tell the Deputy clearly that we do not want to exclude anyone. I believe we will have enough money to meet everybody's needs as closely as we can to 40 cent per litre. That takes in the Deputy's two points on the portal and the extension.

On the Berkery and the Mulvey reports, I thought I would have the Mulvey report out sooner. He is working through the final parts of that. There is a sequence to this and I want to get that report circulated. We will have what I hope will be a final meeting on that towards the end of next week. That report will be helpful to what the Deputy spoke about in his last question. I will not go into it in detail but the Mulvey report from the very start was about trying to look at the industry as a whole. It was about trying to look at the longer term future and informing the Minister, Deputy Heydon, the Department and me on the commitment in the programme for Government to long-term viability and sustainability, which kind of got upended in a greater way by the scientific advice that reduced the quotas for this year. That is what the Berkery report is really about, namely, the immediate response required to address this immediate shock to the system. That is something the Taoiseach and Tánaiste requested. A couple of things have modified that a bit. We have managed to get back a little bit of mackerel. The marketplace has improved a little bit even though we have had a reduced quantity, but the costs have gone up as well, so there are a lot of economic parameters there that need to be addressed. That is all part of the Berkery report and I am very cognisant of driving that ahead.

I have spoken off script to reflect the aquaculture piece because I had envisaged that there would be a discussion about it. I have spoken with IFA Aquaculture committee and a number of people on the rope mussel side. There are about 98 boats on the fishing register that are involved in aquaculture but those boats are principally involved in a fishing exercise for bottom mussels, which is aquaculture and is seen as that. I am conscious there are people who have boats serving the rope mussels side of things, which is intensive enough because they are out there stripping lines. Some of them in certain parts, in one or two of the bays in the south west, have had issues for the past number of years. Their level of husbandry has increased and they are out there more often stripping and cleaning lines because they had that tapeworm issue. That is an issue.

I am conscious that the big finfish side of aquaculture, and salmon farms in particular, have significant costs. They bring in what are referred to as "well boats" from outside the State - there are a number of them in the north Atlantic - whose fuel they pay. It is important that they continue to do that from an animal husbandry perspective. The farms take the fish from the cages and pump them onto the boats where there is fresh water to de-lice them, so that is part of the overall animal husbandry and we want it to continue. We do not want to penalise them. There are very significant costs associated with that.

I am just conscious of the time. I thank the Minister of State for that comprehensive answer.

Apologies. That kind of covers it. We want to include those fishers. We have to work through it and I think we can find criteria that will meet our responsibility to ensure there had been legitimate activity. I just do not have it fully worked through yet, but I will.

In fairness, a Chathaoirligh, the Minister of State can respond in due course to the committee's letter on NIFA's funding and its proposal.

Of course. I would like to look at that in the context of the Mulvey report.

There will be correspondence from the committee, as Deputy Mac Lochlainn said.

I thank everyone. I appreciate that.

I thank the Minister of State. The Government will now be flexible, but I was pretty shocked to hear that the scheme was to close on Friday and the Minister of State was only meeting the representative groups tomorrow. They would only have a working day on Friday to submit applications. From what I gather, the Minister of State is saying that all the Government requires immediately is an expression interest, so you put in your name and boat number. Is that sufficient? There is a hell of a lot more information than that that has to go in. We are dealing with people who would not be that computer literate or would not have accountants they can afford to pay, so it is important that people get support from the Department and that it is not all handed over to BIM to assist them.

Did the Minister of State say "good financial standing with Bord Iascaigh Mhara"? Will he expand on that? Does that mean that, if people are repaying loans, they will not qualify? I can understand it when the Minister of State says they have to be tax compliant, but maybe I misunderstood the wording. It was something about a good standing with BIM.

When the Minister of State agreed on the figure of €15 million for fisheries out of the €100 million, he had to have some indication at that stage of the number of people who would apply. Did he take into consideration all of the boats that would qualify or what number. He has been very clever in saying "up to 40 cent per litre". He is not saying it will not fall below 35 cent, only that it is up to 40 cent. We want to make sure that the interests of the fishers are well protected. The Minister of State then said that vessels under 6 m in length would get between €350 to €500. Why is there such a large range between €350 and €500?

BIM is acting as agent on the Department's behalf. Will BIM be paid and will the additional funding required come out of the €15 million?

Regarding those seeking to apply to the scheme, the Minister of State has said that he would be meeting the organisations and BIM. I know that he met the organisations previously. Is it the Irish Fish Producers Organisation, IFPO? Who else will he be meeting tomorrow before he takes a final decision?

The one good thing I am glad he has said is that he will be flexible as far as the closing date is concerned. On the other hand, though, is the expression of interest sufficient to open the application?

I will clarify a couple of things. I will go through the Deputy's points there. In regard to the meeting with the representative groups tomorrow, there has been ongoing dialogue between the Department, the various representative groups and me. It is like anything, though. I get it, because fishers by their nature are busy right now and some of the issues were raised earlier. The issues about logging in and not gaining access to the portal were only raised with me towards the end of last week. There has been engagement between BIM and NIFA through Ms Avril Egan, who is really on the ball there in terms of representing the views. There are more and more issues arising.

The aquaculture issue has been there and we are working through that. If I was to say two weeks ago that the deadline was to extend by another fortnight, we would not be having this conversation until the end of the fortnight.

It is just the nature of this. We are all the same. We get things done as close to the end as possible. I want to sweat the asset as best we can. We will gather tomorrow to see what the outstanding issues are. It is not the first time we have met. We have spoken on the phone on a good few occasions. This is to tidy up. At that stage we will take a decision then on what we need to do to get it. What I said was, and it may have been out of context, for those who will be remaining and who may not have their paperwork, rather than extend it indefinitely, we will have to find some way of getting them to begin the process and to get as much as they can in to their local person. This is so that when we have to do the loaves and fishes, and I hope we will not have to, we will have some idea of what is still to be receipted. That is the issue we are picking up. I think people are having difficulty uploading the records but they have already figured it out. They are able to do the tot and they know what the story is. We will get a lot of that tidied up tomorrow I am fairly sure. I know BIM has been engaging with all concerned. I am informed that a flat rate of €350 is now the maximum limit that will be available to owners of vessels of less than 6 m. I erred if I mentioned that there was a range between €350 and €500; it is actually a flat rate of €350. I think that gets most of the Deputy's points.

It was 21 days from when the scheme opened until it closed. As the Deputy said, some fishermen may not have even heard in the first five or six days, or maybe even two weeks, that it had opened. Some fishermen may not even know now. That is something we need to look at. I am glad to hear the Minister of State saying that if people get paperwork in, we can look at that. I see it is from 1 March to 31 July. There may not have been any boats out in February, but if a boat was out in January or February, or in August to September last year, they are not counted. Why did we not do this the same as we did with the farmers, where we took 12 months of their fuel expenditure, divided it and give a breakdown? Are fishing boats just out between the five months between March and July? Why did we not give that aggregate to allow for a fisherman who had bought diesel in January or February, or between August and October, and who are not covered otherwise? They may have had their biggest expense in those months; I do not know. Maybe they are tied up because of other things. Those are the questions. Why did we not aggregate it like we did for the farmers?

If we had attempted to aggregate it, we would probably have reduced the payout to those who were most affected. We were left with a situation where the price of fuel shot up in March, and that is a fairly intensive fishing period. There are some who have intense fishing periods in February as well, but they would not have been as impacted. What we would have ended up doing would have meant those who were not impacted gaining at the expense of those who were going to be fishing in the affected months. It goes back to Deputy Gallagher's point about trying to keep as close to the 40 cent. That is the only variable I have. The €15 million is a hard €15 million; I cannot go beyond it. To the other point made, BIM's costs are covered in its administrative costs; they are not coming out of the €15 million. Again, in response to Deputy Maxwell's point, it was about trying to give as much as we possibly could to those who were impacted. If somebody is used to buying a significant amount of diesel in the later days of February, it is clear to us that the fishing effort associated with that is in March, April and May. If that is coming in at a higher cost, then we would use that. We will get over that. We will find flexibility there, but it is about trying insofar as we can. This is a very fuel-intensive business for those who are at it at pace and the cost impact is very significant. If we were to average, it we would be giving everybody a little shake. It is better to concentrate on those who have been most impacted and that is what we were trying to do by narrowing it. The numbers are obviously fewer than in agriculture. Compared with 120,000 farmers, we are looking at approximately 1,800 active fishermen. We will see where it is at. We are going on the numbers who are on the register but some are not active. They are still on the register for their own reasons. That is what we have been trying to do there.

We heard from Inland Fisheries Ireland yesterday that they were overwhelmed. Some fishermen are not computer literate. Are we saying that if they can get their paperwork gathered up and get it in in some way, we can look at it? If there are fisherman who are not computer literate, not email literate and cannot use the portal, do we have some way for them? I do not know how many of them there are but if there is one who is entitled to it, he should get it. An avenue should be there for them to apply if they meet all the criteria and they should not be blocked out because they are not computer literate or they do not have access to an email or a computer.

I am very conscious of that. There is direct support from BIM teams who are used to doing grant administration. They are actively assisting applicants. Then we have a BIM regional officer network covering the entire Irish coastline and they are available to provide on-the-ground support to fishermen and those experiencing IT issues. I want to try to get as much as we can done in these couple of days until we get to the deadline and then we will make a decision. We will know from the Deputies and from ourselves the number of reps. We will know from NIFA which, as I said we are working with. I met Mr. John Menarry, who I know was before the committee yesterday, and Ms Avril Egan has been on the phone to both me and members of the team. The deadline is there. I take the Deputy's point about the 21 days. The reason I wanted to do that was to put pressure on everybody, ourselves included, because I want to get the money out. I cannot start getting the money out until the scheme closes. It is a kind of chicken-and-egg situation. We are in the latter days of it now. I am certainly open to looking at a very short extension if that is what is deemed necessary. I will be talking to the representative bodies tomorrow and I will take their temperature on that. Based on what the Deputy is saying to me and what I am hearing from them, it is clear that we need the flexibility of a day or two here or there to make it happen. However, it is all aimed at getting money out.

I thank the Minister of State.

I wanted to come back in on what Mr. Menarry was saying about the association having to set up emails for fishermen. I have been getting phone calls, as I am sure everybody has, from people asking how they are going to go about doing this and saying there must be an easier way. We have to have some kind of flexibility. We have to understand that there is a lot to this too. These fishers are out doing their job and there is a element of stress involved in paperwork and everything. Just for this period, we have to have some kind of dedicated system in place where they can liaise with somebody to get this over the line. I encourage the Minister of State to put something in place so that there is a dedicated helpline just to get this over the line and so people can call a phone number. If someone could help them to do their application, that would be ideal. We have to understand this going forward. We do not know exactly the numbers coming in to avail of this so it is very important that we do this in a way that will help them and not stress them out. As Mr. Menarry was saying, it is not ideal for a secretary to be coming in and having to put emails in place. I see this as being flawed. I hope the opportunity arises that the Minister of State can look at this in a way that can provide some form of support. We need telephone support, paper support or any way we can get this over the line.

There is a dedicated helpline, a phone number, and as I mentioned, there is that regional officer network and the direct support teams. I know there has been engagement between BIM and those. If that is not enough, we can see when we are talking tomorrow. At this stage, early on people will try, and if it does not work, they will try again. We will have a better idea tomorrow and we will drive that ahead.

On the numbers, there are about 291 applications that are completed and in at the minute. There are about 201 in draft form. That is in response to Deputy Gallagher's point. By somebody going onto the system and registering, getting in their names and details, etc., and putting up their data, those are in draft form.

That is what I want to be able to get, a picture of where we are at. The more that get into that draft form that they have completed, in so far as they can, they have difficulty and maybe the thing breaks down and they cannot upload a receipt, or whatever. The more visibility we have as quickly as possible, the better. That is why we have to decide tomorrow if that constitutes a live application and could the scheme be closed while there is still somebody with an application in draft form. We have to go through the technicalities of it with a sort of an extended deadline to put on the rest of the information, because it cannot drag on forever. The reality is the longer it takes some to submit their claim, we are delaying paying the others, and I do not want to do that either. We are limited by the upper amount of money and we have to do the loaves and the fishes, if that is what we have to do, and we give fish to everybody. We will see how we go, but that gives a flavour of where we are at on that.

There is a dedicated helpline, BIM. This is a bit like giving out the lottery numbers. A person can call 01-2144100 and ask for the grants helpdesk. I presume it is 9 to 5 but again, with the volumes there, I suspect that line may be under pressure too. We will have a better understanding tomorrow. I said to BIM and everybody concerned to keep going. Do we get to a point where we then do a raincheck tomorrow as close to the deadline as possible, get a sense of who has been able to get stuff in in the past couple of days and what the level of support there has been? Sometimes the kind of issues we hear about at the weekend get resolved during the course of the week, and I am hoping that is the case. If it is not, we will take whatever action is necessary to ensure that people get the appropriate support, and that the funding is there for them.

To get this over the line, is there a way that could involve all the organisations which are trying to help out to get some kind of template that could be sent out so they could see steps 1, 2 and 3?

That has been done. That is on the portal, and there has been some help with application videos-----

To get the information out. There is a vacuum.

There is video available. We will look at all of that tomorrow. The Deputy is making a helpful point and we are open to it.

Will the Minister of State repeat the number?

It is a Dublin number: 012144100.

I ask that the Minister of State’s officials email the committee secretariat this evening with that detail, but also the detail of the template and the information that has gone out there because our constituency offices are getting calls as well and it will be useful. As Deputy Mac Lochlainn said earlier, some fishermen are tied into BIM in some ways. They are members of different organisations. However, others are not. If we can get a note on that, we can circulate it to colleagues.

I have a note that says that “since the launch of the scheme, we have put in place a range of supports to assist applicants, including…” and I will send that phone number.

It would be very useful for us.

We will circulate it to the secretariat and the committee can circulate it to the members.

I would be grateful for that.

The Minister of State referred to the regional officers. What is the advantage of the regional officers if all calls go to Dublin? Surely the regional officers are going to be on the ground in the various ports. Would it not be sensible that they get to hold clinics in the respective ports and meet with these people? I am sure there is not a team in Dún Laoghaire that is going to be able to handle all of the calls.

The Minister of State confirmed it is not €350 to €500, it is €350. Surely the Department is not going to require a lot of detail if it is paying out €350? It is nearly as handy to pay the €350 if they are registered and have some proof that they were fishing instead of going into all of that detail. I know it will require more detail for the larger ones, the more than six meters that may get up to 40 cents, but we have to be sensible about it and not overdo the type of requirement. I know the Minister of State wants to pay this money out and I know his attitude, but I hope the attitude of the Department officials is the same, and of BIM, and it is not to find reasons why not to pay it. For €350, I do not think the Department should be going into a lot of detail.

I thank the Deputy. He raised this issue with me before, and as a result of that what we have worked through is we need to know that they were fishing this year. Some €350 is a relatively small amount of money, and for the €350, for those in that range, all they have to provide is some level of sales note to show they have been fishing. They do not have to come with receipts. I was very conscious, as were officials and BIM because they are on top of this, that many of these are smaller crafts and operators, they are part-time and use outboard motors, and much of the diesel, and in some cases, petrol, is bought from the pump, and they do not have a receipt. We know if they have sold some fish they are operating, and if we get some minimal amount of sales notes we will pay them. Those are relatively straightforward.

On the Deputy’s point on the regional network, my understanding is that they are open to providing that type of clinic, though maybe not as extensive as the Deputy’s - his clinics are legendary as nearly anyone around here who gets elected knows. He has set a standard in Donegal that I am sure the two gentlemen either side of him have probably had to keep up as well. Clinics in Donegal are legendary.

The idea is that they are there to help. We need to get this data in as quickly as possible. I have spoken to Richard Donnelly, the chief executive, and he wants to be as flexible as possible, and the Department has given him the direction under Ms McPhilips’ guidance to be as flexible as possible for the purpose of getting the money out. Nobody is trying to delay this, not the officials, Minister, or finance people. Mr. Donnelly’s team is trying to get the money out which is great. That will be very much the discussion tomorrow. It will be about how we can get this moving.

I am still in within the five minutes. I expect people will come to me and will expect me to help them in my clinics. Can we be provided with the information that is required?

Regarding the guidelines for the application, let me see what I can get to the Deputy. I can give him a cheat sheet which I have, which is a list of the things we have done.

It is on the BIM website and we will send links to that. We might not get that tonight, because I am conscious it is 7.40 p.m. and people have been in the office since early morning. My team has been in since 7.30 a.m. because we have been on the go all day on other stuff, but we will certainly get it to the Deputy tomorrow. I will add a link to BIM with this.

In terms of the National Inshore Fisherman's Association, the Minister of State has been speaking to NIFA. Is anybody in his Department dealing with it directly? There may be a bit of a communication issue there.

It is a very good outfit.

The Minister of State spoke at its annual conference.

I can assure the Deputy there is significant dialogue with it.

Okay.

We have not been able to clarify to its satisfaction. I would like to be further along in terms of that discussion, but it remains active and I am hopeful that by the meeting tomorrow it will be addressed or there will be a pathway to addressing it. Otherwise it will be a more fractured meeting than I would like.

Which representative groups are involved?

It is what we refer to as the producer groups, the IFPA, NIFA and all of those. The normal stakeholder groups who are representative of all groups, including the processors. They will be at that.

Will the processors-----

No they are not, but for the purpose of they being significant stakeholders, we try to include them. I am sure they are invited. If not, we will make sure they are.

Is it on Zoom?

It is a Zoom meeting.

If everybody is content they have had their chance to speak, on behalf of the committee, I thank the Minister of State for appearing here as a witness and going through this, and to his officials as well, for being here this evening to assist him.