Pat O'Neill (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Some 90% of our beef is exported. I am amazed that the figure for Germany is only 15,000 tonnes. I thought Germany was one of our major competitors. Does the 90% include live export of animals or is the value for beef carcass or finished product included?

Deputy Heydon raised a point. This is a public forum and what is said is on the public record. Mr. Barry produced a slide showing that finished cattle prices are up by 70% from 2001 to 2012, with a more than 30% increase in two years. Deputy Heydon raised the issue of the base from which they were increasing. One has often heard the phrase, "Lies, damned lies and statistics". We can all produce statistics to prove anything. I can produce statistics. With regard to the 70%, one could say there was only a 35% increase in the nine years prior to 2010. That is a statistic. I remember farmers, and I was one of them, demonstrating outside meat factories about the price they were being paid for beef. That was in the last ten years. It proves that the base price the statistic is coming from is very low. Mr. Barry says we are closing the gap on the EU average. We might be closing that gap but we still have one of the lowest prices per kilo of beef in the EU.

The slide Mr. Barry produced relates to price increases. I would like to see the slide relating to the cost base and how every industry's cost base has increased. Over the last five or six years the input costs in farming have been enormous in the context of that increase. Perhaps I should have left this meeting and gone to get the information on how much the inputs of farmers have increased. It is unfair to put it on the public record that the price of beef has risen by 70% over 11 years, with a 35% increase over the last two years, without also referring to the fact that costs have also risen by nearly an equal amount.