Pat O'Neill (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Cotter for his optimistic overview of the dairy industry. It is great to see such optimism in the presentation but we all saw what happened with the building industry when the banks threw caution to the wind and handed money out left, right and centre. We all saw where that ended up. I would hope that we could promote caution in the dairy industry in terms of the message we are sending out. Dairy prices are dependent on world markets and we should not get carried away with expansions. Expansion should only be undertaken where it is viable and where those involved will get a proper economic return for their investment.

Earlier this year we had a crisis in the beef sector. Our major export market for beef is the UK but Irish beef was being downgraded on supermarket shelves in Britain. The red tractor brand, which is the brand mark for British beef, was suddenly getting a premium price in comparison to what producers of Irish beef were being paid, partly because there was an oversupply of Irish beef. Is there any danger of emerging markets like China and India developing their own agricultural sectors to such an extent that they will start replacing our products with their own? I know such countries can never be fully self-sufficient, but is there not scope there for them to produce more themselves? Could the premium products that we are trying to promote in China, including infant formula and so forth, be replaced by Chinese products eventually or by products from some other country? We are doing well in China at the moment, but there must be a possibility of other countries entering that market and competing with us in the future. In that environment, Irish produce would become a commodity rather than a premium product. I ask the witnesses to comment on the expansion possibilities in India and China. I know that the latter is a vast country, with enormous variations in terms of weather and so forth, but can its agricultural system move from its current model of peasant farming to one which is capable of competing with us? In that scenario, we will not be able to command premium prices. While I welcome the optimism on display here, I feel that cautious optimism is required because we all saw what happened in the building industry.