Chairman:

Before calling the Commissioner, I want to ask him a brief question on the voluntary scheme recently introduced in the dairy sector. It is more than likely we are facing a period of uncertainty and that there will be ups and downs. As the Commissioner mentioned, we had a downward spiral in 2008 followed by an upturn. We are down again now. Nine times out of ten we are guaranteed that will happen again. Can we be certain that the voluntary scheme introduced recently will remain voluntary, rather than mandatory, in the future?