Ms Isolde Goggin:

I will ask Mr. McHugh to deal with the questions about the mergers and Mr. O'Leary to deal with the questions about the ombudsman, transparency and producer organisations, but I will make a quick response to one point. I always feel hard done by when farmers say that we do not go after the meat industry. We chased the beef processors for five years as far as the High Court, the Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and back down again to stop the processors from implementing an anti-competitive agreement, that being, the Beef Industry Development Society, the idea of which would have seen them getting together and paying their competitors to go away. We viewed that as artificially reducing the number of outlets that would be available for beef processing. As such, we have taken extensive, prolonged and eventually successful action in the sector.

I will now ask Mr. McHugh to discuss the mergers.