Anthony Lawlor (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the group for attending. It was enlightening. The last point is key. We are listening to the legacy of the fodder crisis. We think it is here and now. I know it will be long term because supplies have dwindled. Even this year, fertility rates are low as a result, not of the fodder crisis but of the weather.

I have a couple of points. They did not really deal with anything on import substitution. A number of agrifood companies here, particularly of the smaller scale, are doing something in that regard to replace what we are importing into supermarkets and stores.

They spoke of 30,000 jobs being created in the agrifood sector. I visit meat plants regularly because I supply them. Most of the jobs in that sector are being generated by foreign non-nationals. I am aware of small food-producing companies that cannot get staff to work with them because of the associated salary scales and the expectations of the Irish. Naturally, it ends up, particularly in the beef sector and in boning, that most of the staff are non-nationals. As far as the 30,000 are concerned, will we be creating jobs for non-nationals or Irish? As a consequence, what training programmes do we need to provide if we are to take on Irish workers?

As they stated, the dairy sector amounts to 4% of EU output and we are optimist about the future. The 2015 change applies all across the EU, including the big producers such as the Dutch and the Danes. Have we taken on board what they are putting in place? We want to know what the competition is. Obviously, we speak of the Chinese market for baby formula which is exciting, but what are the big producers doing? They see the opportunities in China too. For what are our competitors gearing up post 2015?

I have always had a problem - it is nothing against Senator Quinn personally or anything like that - with the way the main supermarkets operate with the use of loss leaders and the knock-on effect at my level of farming. These are loss leaders, not for the supermarket but for the supplier. IBEC represents all sectors and FDII may be merely a specific sector within that. How does FDII deal in-house on that matter with the representative organisation for supermarkets, such as SuperValu and Tesco, which may be represented by IBEC too? Sometimes IBEC issues mixed messages. As we highlighted earlier, its chief economist has come out with a mixed message in the past month. Are there mixed signals issuing from within FDII's sector in IBEC on who is the stronger?