Susan O'Keeffe (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her comments. I would be interested in hearing a little more about young farmers in Northern Ireland, how they are coping, what the profile is in their staying in or leaving the business, the support she believes she can give, leaving aside the CAP, and what she envisages the state of farming will be in the next ten to 20 years for young farmers entering it.

On the issue of badger vaccination, given the incidence of TB in Northern Ireland, has the Minister had to set a very firm timeline for some outcomes on the matter of whether the project will be successful? For how long will she let it run before she decides whether it is working?

On the horsemeat issue, while I accept entirely what the Minister is saying about people looking for shorter supply chains and being more careful in how they shop, I suspect that will be the response in the short term and that as we go on, they will ease back to where they were. Cost will always drive cheaper food production. Now that producers have shown they can have a longer supply chain, they will go back to this and we will see an increase in such food production. What lessons did the Minister learn from this? I am not talking so much about co-operation with us but more about what the Executive learned and about the role of the Food Standards Agency and whether she believes sufficient rules, regulations and authority are in place to say in so far as it is possible to do so that it will not happen again. We can never say something will not happen again. Although I know that, as politicians, we often like to say this, it is probably a waste of time. In so far as we can make regulations as good as possible, what has been done in Northern Ireland as distinct from the rest of the United Kingdom? What has the Minister learned and done? Does she think any reputational damage was done to beef products from Northern Ireland? I would be interested in hearing about this because the matter is still very current here.