Michelle Mulherin (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Does Mr. Healy accept that farmers are price-takers from the factories? A farmer does not go to a factory and negotiate. He takes what he can get. I accept that the price sheep farmers have got has increased; that is known. However, across the board there is very little differential in prices between various factories and what they offer on a Monday morning when a farmer brings his animals for slaughter. The motivation for factories is not the farmers. They want to keep the farmers coming in but they maximise prices and returns for the shareholder, not the farmer. That is the reality. As I understand it, that is how the system works.

The complaint we hear from farmers is that they get the same price from each factory. They are not striking a bargain and they do not have equal bargaining power. That is one of the complaints we get about meat factories. I am not damning meat factories because we also hear complaints about the retail multiples all the time. That is why there are so many study groups and efforts to increase the bargaining power of farmers. To argue otherwise is to ignore reality.

Mr. Cormac Healy:I will argue otherwise because what Senator Mulherin said is not the case. The price is clear and transparent. First, the price is not the same for all lambs. Second, there are various levels of discussion around price, whether for producer groups providing a particular lot of lambs or larger farmers with a substantial number of lambs. There is variation in price. The best response on price is to point to how the lamb price is performing relative to some of our competitors in European markets, and it is performing strongly.