Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. According to the presentation, the Irish market for organic produce is €110 million. How much of it is supplied by Irish, as opposed to imported? How much organic production is marketed, branded and sold as organic? Farmers produce beef organically and receive the top-ups and grants for doing so. However, when it goes to a factory, the factory sells it on as ordinary meat, not as a premium product. There is a major mismatch in both directions. The witnesses said three categories, vegetables, yoghurt and fruit, made up half the retail organic sales in Ireland. It is fascinating the beef and lamb are not included, and it shows there is a major challenge. I would love to see the composition of what organic farmers are producing. Is it mainly beef, vegetables, fruit or dairy products that can be made into yogurt? How do the producers and retailers match up? It is very important.

Is there a significant variation in our organic exports? Many of the organic products sold in Ireland would be vegetables, potatoes and fruit, whereas our exports are less likely to be in this market. Some domestic organic produce would be sold in farmers' markets. I imagine our organic exports are more in the lamb and beef sectors. There is no point in telling me the organic market is worth £40 billion if we do not know what we are likely to get on the market and what there is demand for.

I take it that everything sold as organic here under the Bord Bia label is accredited. For some reason, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine requires organic farmers to get accreditation from private companies at a phenomenal annual cost of approximately €3,000, which is a hell of a lot of money for a farmer. Given that Bord Bia is doing accreditation for these farmers, why do they have to get a duplicate accreditation at such a cost? Could Bord Bia do the accreditation for them? Presumably, Bord Bia sends its inspectors to check that everything is done correctly so products can be sold as organic. I do not understand why they have to hand over so much of their hard-earned cash for accreditation, given that Bord Bia is already doing it. As is often the case in Ireland, it seems we have to do everything twice rather than in a simple way.

It always seemed a strange paradox that none of the farmers who probably operate in the most natural way, by whom I mean hill farmers, are, to my knowledge, organic farmers. Of these, hill sheep farmers particularly are not. I understand the reason is that they dose the sheep, particularly for worms and fluke. On the other hand, it is fair to say that, compared to intensively fed animals, the blackface mountain lamb is one of our most unique and most natural products. Perhaps they would consider this, maybe not under an organic label but under some label. I might be straying a little out of court but, please God, the Chairman will indulge me on this one. I was involved, as a co-op manager many years ago, in trying to market hill lamb. It is not the easiest thing in the world to do. We started flying them live by jet to Italy. Then Halal companies came in and started slaughtering them. It cost £4,000 in 1976 to charter an aeroplane from Martinair to fly them from Shannon to Milan. As I said, there was a market then in Italy, Portugal and Spain, but it always has been a very variable market. One of the thought processes I have had over the years is, rather than selling Connemara hill lamb and Kerry hill lamb, why not have a Wild Atlantic Way hill lamb?