Tom Barry (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have been involved in buying and selling a lot of products over the years and not just agricultural products. I take Mr. Brophy's point about the invoice cost but it would be naive to say that is a fundamental basic. We all know about rebates and we all know about scale. Mr. Brophy knows well that if we brought in something based on the invoice cost, I, or someone else could produce an invoice to the supplier at whatever the supplier wanted and then everyone else is screwed because that invoice is then taken as a template. That I why I am trying to drill down to the cost of production. The way this is going to be solved will be with a bottom-up approach where we can actually make a living as primary producers. I am absolutely sick to the teeth of the primary producer getting fleeced. Mr. Brophy's case is an extreme version of it. People are lying to our face and telling us that the public wants it and that they are doing a public service; they are not. However, rebates exist. In fairness, we cannot get away from cost of production. The retailer pays the supplier but at the end of the day I ask who is paying for the promotions.

I am being told that people are paying for marketing support, which is "hello money" under a different form. I am hearing that there are certain people paying directly to get their products into prominent positions. If what I am hearing at this meeting that the retailers are paying the growers for the product, they are dropping the price dramatically so everyone else is getting hammered. There seems to be a web of intrigue and it is a case of whatever they can decide or dream up at short notice. If we could be supplied with a list of where the major abuses occur, even without names, it would be really helpful as a way to begin untangling this. If we follow the money we will get to where the problem is. I know that some of these multiples do not supply their accounts in Ireland but if we follow the money of where the suppliers are supplying we will get to where the abuse is happening. It is good to hear this because at least, now, we have growers who are willing to say, "Stop" and we have not had that up to now.