I had not reached the point in my presentation which deals with the structure of the administration of the agency. Deputy McGinley's point is an important one. The location of the agency may be in Spain. That does not mean the structure for governing and staffing the agency is within the control of a particular member state.
The regulations set out how the administrative board of the agency will operate. There will be one representative from each coastal member state. Every member state which has a coast, of which we are one, will be represented on the board. It is also proposed that there be four non-voting representatives from the industry, to ensure a greater degree of shared management with the fishing industry in Europe. Decisions on the operation of the agency will be by majority vote. The rules for the recruitment of staff are set out in the regulations. They are the general rules which govern the appointment of European Union Commission staff. It is a Community institution which is located in one member state.
Everyone agrees with the comments made by Deputy McGinley on the issue of strong uniform control. The current arrangements, where we have a fishery shared across many different waters while the responsibility resides solely with each individual member state, does not guarantee uniform control or equivalent effectiveness. It has been long a cross-party position in Ireland that a level playing field is needed in the area of fisheries control throughout the Union. The agency is part of the response to that call. There needs to be a more uniform and co-ordinated fisheries control effort within Community waters if the rules and regulations established under the Common Fisheries Policy are to be applied effectively to everybody. This is part of a wider range of initiatives to achieve a stronger and more uniform fisheries control. That general objective has long been supported by Ireland.
The Commission will adopt the monitoring, control and surveillance programmes and set the benchmarks and standards for control and surveillance as a general requirement while the Community fisheries control agency will set up programmes to implement the benchmarks and standards and a Community fisheries monitoring centre to gather all the satellite information so that fisheries can be examined, irrespective of where they are occurring.
The agency will work in concert and in consultation with the member states concerned and it will adopt joint deployment programmes within three months of the Community adopting monitoring control and surveillance standards for a particular fishery. The agency will also identify the means of control and inspection, which are to be pooled in this collective effort, and the optimal organisation of the resources.
It is anticipated that the agency should commence its operations in 2006 and an indicative budget of €5 million will be provided. The funding will come from the Community budget and the agency will also have the power to generate revenue through contracts of services, training, publications, etc. One of its functions is to provide a uniform training service for fisheries inspectors throughout the Union so that fisheries inspection is operated in a standard and uniform way by member states and agencies currently engaged in that task.
Many detailed issues must be worked out. The proposal has only recently been published. There will be an initial discussion on it at the October Fisheries Council and we are also awaiting a Commission feasibility study on a variety of the detailed elements of the proposals, which is expected next week or the week after. When both of those are to hand, there will be a detailed evaluation of the proposal at working group level. Nationally, we have established an interdepartmental network to examine this because it has implications for a number of Departments. For example, the Naval Service and the Air Corps are involved in fisheries control and legal and jurisdictional issues must be addressed.
The proposal will be addressed by a number of Departments and agencies and they will have an input into the analysis of the working group in the Commission. The earliest adoption date by the Council will be mid-2005 with commencement in early 2006 \and, therefore, there will be quite a debate on its detail before it is adopted.