Mr. Andrew Cromie:

As with any sector, there are issues of economies of scale. Larger farms that are bringing replacements back into their dairy herds and beef herds that are breeding their own replacements will, by the use of genomics, be able to identify the sorts of animals they should be bringing onto their farms without having to carry the high cost of bringing in a wrong animal. I am talking about the suckler farmer who has 15 cows and is reliant on every one of those cows to have a calving every year. Two wrong cows with no calving will have a significant impact on his profitability. In that case, genomics is giving that farmer an even larger percentage benefit.

From the overall industry perspective and where it is positioning us in terms of Food Harvest 2020, we are now making levels of genetic gain in the dairy herd which are unparalleled. That is a consequence of the database, Gene Ireland and Genomics. We have every opportunity to repeat in the beef herd what we have achieved in the dairy herd.

On the issue of the suckler cow welfare scheme raised by Senator Ó Domhnaill, the scheme is giving us the infrastructure in beef that we have enjoyed in dairying. We will move rapidly into the beef sector the thinking and the technologies we have developed in dairying, again working with the group in Teagasc to deliver the same potential benefits in beef, which are of the order of hundreds of millions of euro in increased profits.