Mr. John Comer:

I thank the Chairman. There were many questions, and I will go through a few of them briefly in no particular order. Our general secretary, Mr. Enright, will take up the ones I leave out or that do not know the answer to but will not admit it.

The voluntary supply constraint is a major issue. It is new and people are afraid of it. I and our organisation are fully supportive of the concept. Deputies Penrose and McConalogue and others referred to the term "voluntary" at the beginning of the meeting. It certainly has to be voluntary, because any farmer who has incurred fixed costs in terms of expansion cannot be told that he or she cannot milk cows. We have to put that up against what caused the problem. Why did we go from almost 40 cent down to 21 cent? It was not the same as in 2009, and people found that difficult to understand. The farmer experienced the same results but for completely different reasons. Both reasons were the same, but involved different jurisdictions. The problem was oversupply. The 2014 crisis was caused by extra milk in Europe. Europe traditionally produces around 140 billion litres of milk per year, and production increased to 147 billion litres. The market was still growing.

We created a crisis by producing too much in Europe, not in New Zealand, Australia or America. We were the main contributor to the extra volumes.

It seems to me to be a rudimentary idea that an alternative is provided to drying a product and putting it into storage. After a lot of lobbying, a voluntary supply constraint was proposed. Many people asked for it not to be voluntary. Deputies McConalogue and Penrose are correct. It was not in Ireland's interest, as a major exporter, to have it made mandatory. I felt if we did not opt for a voluntary scheme it would be made mandatory and we will would be snookered.

The scheme is in place now and it is a concept that will work. It should be an automatic trigger at whatever level an independent body decides the cost of production is, and once levels fall below that it should automatically kick in. It will not cost taxpayers a whole pile of money as far as I am concerned, compared to the alternatives. It is a strong tool that can be used at a European level.

At a national level, the farm management deposit scheme can be used in cases where, like in 2014, there is a high income. The reality is that some farmers were faced with high taxable income and paid the top rate of tax but in late 2015 and 2016 faced a tax bill and, in some cases, were not able to put food on the table. I am not putting on the poor mouth because I do not go into that, but that is the reality. Farmers ended up with no income after having had high levels of income.

In a good year, farmers could be allowed to put, for example, €20,000 into a private scheme and pay corporation tax on the way in. We are building up a major problem in this country, whereby farmers are being forced to incorporate and sole traders, that is, the family farm structure with which we are familiar, are disadvantaged at every turn. This would help as an alternative. One can choose any figure to invest; I am only explaining the concept. A farmer could put money into a scheme and if, within five years, they had to take it out to augment their income because they had no income, they would pay income tax relevant to the year they took out the investment. If we could get the concept established we would be doing very well.

There are many questions on the beef grid, which Mr. Enright might cover. On the power of the multiples and what we want, I am not sure if I am at liberty to name a multiple operating in this jurisdiction but one has a turnover of over €32 billion. That would shake our Taoiseach and Government because it is a lot of money. No member state can come up with legislation that will address the imbalance in terms of the giant versus individual farmers. The issue has to be addressed at a European level.

In terms of fleshing out some of the detail, Deputy Cahill did not seem to have great faith in legislation. I am not so sure about legislation, but I can tell the committee without fear of contradiction that voluntary codes have not worked. When something is not working, one has to look for a way around it. I would be open to developing ideas that might work. Deputy Pringle stated a litre of milk was only 5% of Irish production, but that could also pertain to other products such as powder, cheese and everything else. I do not see any issue with that. It does not have to specifically involve a litre of milk.

There are many other questions and I would like to be respectful in trying to answer them all. I will ask Mr. Enright to deal with them.