Mr. Cormac Healy:

As we have said on a number of occasions regarding the communication on the specification in respect of beef under 16 months and when it was communicated, a point to which Deputy Heydon specifically referred, it goes back to Food Harvest 2020 because at that time and at the time of the subsequent beef activation group there was a largely farmer-driven increase in bull production conversion in Ireland and people were trying out the system because of the efficiencies in terms of weight gain and growth rate that it delivered. The communication was made as far back as then. On numerous occasions companies in their engagement at meetings with Teagasc etc. discussed these issues and it was constantly highlighted from the industry's perspective that steer and heifer production was what the industry and Irish beef exports have been built on and that they will remain the key driver of development in the future. That is what the European marketplace is seeking from Ireland. Bull beef is produced on the Continent. Therefore, they have that and they are looking for something different.

I would refer to one market, the German market, which we lost many years ago at the dawning of the first BSE crisis and while significant progress has been made by us in that market, ten to 15 years ago we were out of that market overnight, as many markets had closed at that stage. The Argentinian and Uruguayan markets took up the mantle and produced steer and heifer beef and they had a stranglehold on that market for many years. Thankfully, in more recent years, because of the fall-off in exports from Argentinian and less product coming through from Uruguay, the Irish industry has successfully re-established itself as an exporter of steer and heifer beef. It is important that we say that and put that message out, but it has been said already.

We are glancing over, to some extent, what is the driver of difficulties at the moment, and in so far as there are difficulties it is a very difficult market. Reference was made by Deputy Deering to the lack of promotional activity. That is one of the issues in that because of relativities of beef price versus some of the other meat proteins, there has not been any significant level of promotional activity that would start to drive volume and move product through the system. There are other issues affecting the market. The fact that we had a reasonably mild January and February is not good for beef sales. Mild, wet weather does not help sell beef to consumers. It has not driven any sales over the last number of months. That and a number of other issues are putting a considerable pressure on the industry in terms of moving product. The issue that will be of most concern to a processing company - at the end of the day we take cattle, break them up, process them into cuts and sell them - is a building stock level in vac-pac chilled products and there not being movement in those products at the end of the week. That is a factor and it is a driver. In such circumstances, animals that are at the extremes of, or outside, specifications will be the ones that will suffer most. That is the reality of it. Why would somebody who was producing an animal that is in specification and can possibly find more market outlets be penalised in that regard?

In terms of having cattle killed, when we met the IFA leadership we asked for names to be put forward. Ten days ago we gave a commitment to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine that any individual issue brought to the attention of a meat plant or Meat Industry Ireland would be pursued. The reality is, however, that the young bull kill has increased from 4,000 per week to 5,500 per week and, over the last four weeks, to 6,500 per week on average. Last week 18% more young bulls were killed compared to the same week last year.