Mr. Lorcan McCabe:

Some 30% of milk produced in Northern Ireland comes across the Border because there are not sufficient facilities to process it in the North. There are three co-ops or milk processors in Ireland which need that milk to run efficient businesses. As the committee will have seen in our submission, there are 32,000 lorry crossings of the Border each year. That issue has to be addressed. We cannot have the segregation of milk. It just will not happen. Even if everything goes right with the Brexit deal, this will be a very big problem. As I have said, we have seen a perfect marriage between milk from Northern Ireland and milk from Southern Ireland. Farms in the North produce milk throughout the winter. This keeps our facilities going winter and summer which puts money in my pocket and the pockets of every other farmer, South and North. I know the co-ops are doing everything they can in Westminster but the UK Government needs to know this will hurt its farmers even more than it will hurt farmers south of the Border. I will not go into more detail; the committee knows what I am talking about.