Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I suspect they do. If we are going to have about 300,000 more cows in our herd between now and 2020, which is an increase of approximately 25% to 30%, we will get the other 25% growth from increased yield in cows. As a rule of thumb, it takes about one person to milk 100 cows. That is a conservative figure so it may take more in many family farm situations. That means that we are going to have an extra 3,000 people milking cows in five years. Many of those people will not have farms but will be coming in to milk on other people's farms. This will be similar to the current situation in New Zealand, where professional dairy experts advise on management, grazing, feeding, delivering the best yield and feed conversion efficiency, and all of the other things that our dairy industry will be about. This requires training programmes and we are putting some of those in place as we speak, although more are needed.

On the beef question that Deputy Deering asked, we have spent more time on beef this summer than anything else and I suspect we will also be spending more time on it this autumn than anything else. The big target market for the next six weeks or so is the US. We have been working on that for two years and are more or less through all the barriers. Irish beef will be the first European beef into the US market in 16 years, since BSE, and for the first time ever the price of beef in the US is as high as the price of beef in Europe. It is a great time to be getting into the east coast of the US in particular. It will be a big new opportunity for us.

In recent days we have also finalised veterinary certification for exporting beef to Iran, and ironically I have had two meetings with the Iranian ambassador in the past ten days and am meeting a political delegation today. We may take a trade mission to Iran in the spring. They have 80 million people and import a fortune's worth of beef, from Brazil at the moment. They are very interested in trying to get European and Irish beef back into Iranian markets at premium level. We are also going to China in six weeks' time. We will have at least 60 Irish companies with us and all the big beef companies will be there. We are currently selling about €40 million worth of beef hides into China, but if we can sell beef into China and can get the restrictions removed, this would be most exciting as there is a very high-end premium market in big cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing.

The two markets that will excite the industry most are the US and China, however last year we opened markets in Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. Previously 40% of beef in Saudi Arabia was Irish, so these markets have been a proven success story in the past, and there are multiple new market opportunities opening up for us. This is why we should be able to slaughter more than 30,000 animals a week in the future, and still get premium prices for our products. However, we have to be very proactive in opening up some of these new premium markets.