Mr. Fergal O'Leary:

If I might add on the beef club, we know that other suppliers are thinking about similar initiatives. From our point of view, as Ms Goggin said in the statement, it is not a concern at the moment, but the bigger it gets, the more attention it would get from us. We are not saying that everything is always fine into the future, and we will continue to monitor that. I would have thought that any company the size of Glanbia would have taken legal advice itself before implementing such a scheme because our reputation does precede us, and if it was seen that it was even close to the margins, it would expect to hear from us.

On the cartel, I have read an awful lot from testimonies in front of this committee and newspaper reports, and spoken to farmers myself, and I agree with the sentiment that farmers feel very hard done by. I agree as well that 99 out of 100 of them would say there is price fixing going on. I can say from the CCPC point of view that we have had complaints. Senator Mulherin asked about that. We had one in 2016, four in 2017, and one in 2018. That one in 2018 was anonymous, but I can guarantee this committee that we looked into each and every one of those thoroughly. Cartel investigations are the lifeblood of our organisation. We had a successful case before the courts earlier on in the year and we want to have these cases successfully brought about because of what they do for us in terms of motivating staff and our reputation. As Deputy Cahill said, we have looked at issues in the agriculture sector, so there is no sector that we will not look at, but from a value for money to the taxpayer point of view, we have to have some evidence to go after it. I would say to this committee and the Senators' and Deputies' contacts that if they have information, as was said in the statement, we will meet them at any location at any time and we will look into any kind of evidence we receive. That one complaint from 2018 was anonymous, and we still looked into it and spent a lot of time on it. We want to do that, but as Ms Goggin has highlighted, this is a market with a lot of price information out there. It is published in the newspapers and in agriculture at a certain time. Ms Goggin made the comparison with Moore Street. We have a cost comparison website where one will find every mortgage rate in the country. The information is out there, but that does not necessarily mean there is a cartel.