Ms Isolde Goggin:

I apologise. Mergers are looked at on a case-by-case basis. The bigger ones go to the European Commission, so the Slaney Foods International and Dawn Meats deal would have gone to the EU because it was over a certain threshold. The test is whether there is a substantial lessening of competition, and that involves looking at many factors, including the strength of buyers and sellers, as well as how much competition exists and might be introduced. I am reluctant to say how many players would be enough because we and the European Commission do a lot of very detailed scrutiny on every merger that comes in. There have been industries where what is called a four to three merger has been permitted, where, for example, there used to be four players and, say, the number one player buys the number four player. That would be looked at differently from the number one player buying the number two player, because then the two strongest players would be coming together. Sometimes a market with three strong players would be more competitive than a market with four not so strong competitors.

I cannot give a figure for the number of competitors and market share because it depends on how easy it is to enter and exit the market. I am sure the Senator knows that a great deal of scrutiny goes into this and that the decisions that are published, such as the one I mentioned, are very complicated assessments of the market. We blocked the merger of Kerry and Breeo a while back, which we lost, but that was based on a very detailed dig into all the different sectors and products involved. I am sorry there is not a "Yes" or "No" answer but it takes a lot of scrutiny and it depends on the type of market.