Mr. Stephen Arthur:

I wish to answer Deputy Ó Cuív's point on the North. He asked about the northern price. What is taking place in the North is there are people there who are getting less of a price than we are getting. The people there are working in a worse situation. They had free arms up there to expand. In the North the theory is that a farmer will milk 100 cows this year and try to milk 200 cows next year with a smaller margin. They got quotas for nothing. It is a typical example of when expansion goes wrong. Farms up there are completely bursting at the seams and full of cows. There are articles in the Irish Farmers' Journal on it every week. There are families milking 250 cows and not even getting paid for it. The situation is worse up there. The processors are buying milk for nothing and selling it down here cheaper than the equivalent product here. On average, Northern Ireland milk prices are running below our prices. Their margin is a minus. We have seen figures coming back from there in minus territory. It comes back to what the committee has said about down here. We are not getting a price to cover even family labour. We are working for nothing. All one need do is consider our situation and what occurred in England. We are about two years behind them. We were five for six years behind.