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

Having listened to the two different presentations today from the group earlier on and this group, it is amazing that they paint such a different picture. If a visitor was here an hour and a half ago, he or she would have heard of an sector on its knees and in crisis. In the MII presentation, Mr. Healy paints a picture of an excellent performance over the past five years, with improved efficiency, improved price and improved markets - entering 75 countries - compared to the position in 2005. If one talks to producers, however, that is not really the case.

Without primary producers, the MII has nothing. The primary producers are in serious difficulty, and not for the first time. This is history repeating itself. Every two-to-three years, this issue arises and there is no certainty. The big issue is no certainty.

Without wishing to rehash the point, the 16 month old bull beef issue has been rehashed repeatedly here. There is no denying, although the MII has said otherwise, that primary producers were encouraged down that road by the MII and others, and it is an unfair practice to change the goalposts now in midstream.

As I stated earlier, there is a short-term problem at present. First, there is the age limit where farmers cannot get their animals killed. Over the weekend, I spoke to a farmer who had 100 bulls three weeks over age in his shed and nobody will even talk to him, let alone kill them. What is he going to do with those? Every day they are a day older and they will be of less value to anybody. It is costing money.

Mr. Healy made, I suppose, the fair point that prices have improved over the past four or five years, but the costs of production have also risen, probably by much more, which creates another difficulty.

I ask them to comment on a specific point made in an earlier presentation on access to the CMS AIMs within the factories. Who has access to that? Is it confined to MII management? Is it confined to veterinaries? The perception is that persons have access to that system who should not have access to it, they are able to manipulate the system and able to know who has what, for example, that farmer X or Y should have Z amount of cattle coming next week or the following week. The perception is that one is able to control the numbers coming in on a week-to-week basis.

I was also disappointed to hear in the MII presentation that there has been no promotion of beef by retailers since Christmas. That, to me, was disappointing. The MII is feeding into the retailers around Europe and, thankfully, from that point of view, there are now more of them. Why was there no promotion? One would imagine that in times of difficulty more promotion would be required to create more markets for that. It is something that needs to be investigated.

Post 2015, when milk quotas are abolished, there will be more dairy-type beef animals coming into the system and we will need more markets for them. What is the future for those? Even though Mr. Healy would say that the future is rosy, that would not be the case. If we continue as we are, we will go down the same road every couple of years. We might have two good years followed by three bad years and then cycle will repeat itself. Every time we have two or three bad years, one will lose an increasing number of producers, which has a knock-on effect for the sector.

There is Food Harvest 2020 targets to achieve. At one stage, these seemed realistic but at this stage one would have to question whether or not those targets are achievable. Some 30,000 is the number being killed at present. Once we go over that 30,000 mark, there seems to be a problem. Our target in Food Harvest 2020 is 40,000. What if the position is that once we hit the 31,000 mark, all of a sudden there will be a drop in price and then we will be in trouble? That seems to be how the trend is developing.

A question that arises from time to time is the feedlot issue. Does the industry support feedlots or does it have feedlots? How many feedlots does it have or what type of numbers would it have in those feedlots at any given time? If there is a number of feedlots, and Mr. Healy may correct me if I am wrong, the perception is the feedlots would have a substantial number of animals coming in at any one time and one could choose from them to depress the price of the market. Is that the case? If so, it is something that needs regulation.

Finally, the MII might have attended as part of the process when the committee was dealing with grocery related matters last year.

Would the organisation favour a round-table discussion at this committee on the regulation and future of the industry and all matters relating to that?