Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I hope they are listening.

How did we get on the runaway train, considering the Chinese market involved an artificial increase? As Mr. Collins illustrated earlier, a lot of that, with the powders, was purely artificial. There was a bit of an increase but having got their own house and various internal factors in order again, they are now back. What is the prospect of that market ever becoming what it was? It was 2.2 billion litres in one year. Mr. Collins stripped it out. In fairness, the real increase was less than one third of that. Can we ever get back to that position or where does Mr. Collins see us going in that regard?

The Russian market is affected by a political decision. We cannot circumvent the politics. There was a political decision taken at EU level. The EU Commission made a decision that had a significant impact upon that attractive and developing market and left the balloon based upon an active intervention at political level. Has the EU done enough to mitigate the consequences of that decision or is there anything that can be done in that regard?

What is Mr. Collins's view for the medium-term outlook? When I was studying economics under Professor Sheehy, he always built in the one factor that only God could account for, that is, the weather. Of course, good weather means a longer growing season, a far greater level of production, better dry matter and better output in terms of protein and everything else. If one gels the scientific and all the other factors together, there is no surprise. For any farm organisation or any farmer who comes in to me and tells me that he is surprised and farmers did not know this was going to happen, it was as obvious as the nose on one's face that this was going to happen. I warned farmers not to be taken in and to build on, and try to increase from, what they had before thinking about investing, which could be millions of euro in terms of them and certainly hundreds of thousands in terms of the investment capacity, and all I was hearing was that Irish farmers were under borrowed or lowly borrowed by comparison with those in other countries. I thank God for that. I hope not too many of them got caught up in this.

What is Mr. Collins's view of the longer-term outlook? The population of the world and the capacity for affluence in developing economies are important factors. The population of the world is increasing and we project that by 2025 it will be 8.5 billion or thereabouts. That is no use unless they have purchasing power. Has Mr. Collins factored that in? Does he see that as probably the only saving grace, considering that consumers are switching back to dairy, and particularly consumer preference and, as Mr. Collins stated quite correctly, medical input? A few years ago, we were all brought up with country butter made by the local farmer. There was a lot of salt in it, obviously, as a preservative but it was the best. I have tasted nothing like it since. Then we shifted off and became conscious of cholesterol and everything else, and now we are shifting back. Everything is a function of medical assessment at a particular point in time. How can one tell somebody that ten or 12 years ago butter was bad for you? Years ago, we always had it with a bit of cabbage. That was a disaster but now we are switching back. There is now a plethora of consumer factors. Actually, I would love to be doing economics now. It would be very interesting as long as the examiners kept their questions practical and not theoretical.