Pat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Cormac Cunningham and Mr. Ruairí Cunningham. As a long-suffering liquid milk producer in the South - I was one of the 2,000 hard-pressed producers for a long time - I find today's debate very interesting. I would like to ask a couple of straightforward questions. How much money has Strathroy Dairy invested in its processing plant over the last ten years? What is the average farm size, measured by reference to the number of cows, of the dairy's suppliers? How does that compare to what we have in the South? I would like to ask about the dairy's producers. The witnesses mentioned that their company has made inroads into every county in the South. Does it have suppliers in every county?

I would like to pick up on the point made by Deputy Heydon about price. There is a contention that those of us in the South are not operating on a level playing field, compared to those in the North. I do not mean to keep differentiating between one and the other, as I do not think that is the whole purpose of the exercise. We all want to get to the bottom of the whole issue. How is it possible for Strathroy Dairy to be successful and productive if it is travelling to collect milk in counties Carlow or Kildare, bringing it back to Omagh and bringing it back down again to put it on shelves in some of the large multiples? I will not mention any particular examples. How is the dairy making a profit from such activity when its produce is being sold at a similar price to that produced by farmers in County Carlow who supply milk to Glanbia, which is just down the road, to be sold from a shelf just over the road? How can that be done?

There is a fear about what will happen if we open the floodgates and a large amount of milk starts to come from the South. The fact that 25% of the milk in the North is coming down into the Southern market has been debated here over a period of time. If the floodgates are opened, will that put more and more pressure on producers in the South? The witnesses have said that Strathroy Dairy pays its suppliers well for their milk. I would contend that nobody pays their suppliers well. This issue has been discussed at this forum for a while. The percentage the farmer is getting today is less than the percentage the farmer was getting 20 years ago. I would not call that paying well. How can that be achieved?