Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for missing Ms Tacon's opening statement as I had other meetings to attend. Her views are very interesting. She spoke of how arbitrations take about a year and how she regards that as being slow. That would be record time in Ireland for anything to happen. If we got to that point it would be an advance in itself.

I was interested in her remarks about the lead-in time in how her role established itself. Ireland has no similar role and that is something we are considering promoting. Ms Tacon has been in her role for six years. How long does she think is a reasonable time for building a relationship with suppliers and growers? What I am getting at is that we should not expect immediate results. If it was put in place here, one would expect it to take five or six years before seeing changes, or maybe a couple of years.