Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am talking about the volume. I know about the pricing and I have been looking at the book. It will come as a surprise to most of the population that Ireland imports much more food than it exports. We always knew we were eating more pasta and rice and that we were eating fewer potatoes than we used to, but when I looked at these figures I did not realise the scale of what we are doing. I understand the pricing when it comes to euro, but let us talk about the product first because it is about the product and the price can vary between sterling, euro and everything else. The value of what we sold to the UK last year was €5.5 billion but the value of what we imported was €4.5 billion. That is not a major difference. It has come as a bit of a surprise to find we are importing more than we are exporting. Am I right in saying all of this? I am talking about the volume of trade in tonnes based on the Department's annual report. Are those figures right or not?