Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Bentley, Mr. Zeig and Mr. Fennell for their excellent presentation.

Deputy Ó Cuív has me smiling over here. I keep thinking of the wild blackface lamb and the Wild Atlantic Way and I thought, why not have the "Comeragh sunny south-east whiteface organic wild lamb"?

Moving on to serious business, it is interesting that Aldi and Lidl have entered the organic market. Organic was big before the recession but it is coming back. I should know the answer to the following question, and it must be a good one, but what percentage added value do meat or vegetables gain for a producer selling to the market if they are organic?

We had an interesting chat here. We have had so many meetings recently but it was a defining moment for me. I am interested in Deputy Ó Cuív's point. If a farmer is grazing sheep on the hills and dipping his sheep, and therefore they are non-organic, there could be organic sheep grazing alongside them. The light-bulb moment for me was that all our commonages and hills are organic and if the farmers knew that and we could help them become organic, they could get a much greater return on their lambs. These are farmers who need this money and who are suffering great hardship.

The three witnesses will be able to tell me better than anyone else what they are doing right in Austria. Is it something to do with European grants and have we got the grants wrong here? Austria is only a little bigger than Ireland and its population is much larger, but it has 20,000 organic farmers and we have 1,700. Obviously, theirs is a much wealthier nation. They are getting a much bigger price but our sector is doing the same amount of work. There is a bit of hassle in organic but once one gets into it, it is pretty much the same. I am sorry to say this, but we have much more low-hanging fruit in terms of image than Austria. When one goes to Biofach in Germany, as I have done, they see our Origin Green and the Minister, Deputy Coveney's sustainability programme straightaway. It is a real piece of low-hanging fruit.

The Minister of State, Deputy Tom Hayes, asked last year if Irish farmers are slightly afraid of converting to organic. Is there something we are not doing in this regard? He stated that there are very significant opportunities for the sector, and that we have a great name right across the world in terms of cleanliness, the beautiful food and the environment. Are we missing something there? Some 14% of all Austrian farmers are organic. I note the words they used: "premium", "differential" and "Irish". There is a lot more money to be got for our farmers here but somehow or other, although Bord Bia is doing a lot of work, the Government is not doing something and we are not joining the dots. I would appreciate the representatives' straight-up hard views on this subject. The position of hill farmers is a piece of low-hanging fruit for us because neither I nor, I think, Deputy Ó Cuív knew that we could help many farmers convert to organic where they could get perhaps 80% more for their lambs.