Ms Tara McCarthy:

I thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to attend today and discuss one of the greatest challenges that our food industry has ever faced. As can be seen in our submission, we have been rigorously focused on that challenge since it was presented, and even before that. We have been trying to look through all the different manifestations and challenges of the known knowns or the unknown knowns to use those unwelcome words. The one consistent we have looked at is that we control what we can control. That is where we have been dedicating all of our focus, namely, on what we can control. There are so many elements that we cannot control into which we could put significant resources but still be none the wiser from it.

We are well aware of the logistics of the free trade agreements. We have been liaising with Dairy Industry Ireland and other stakeholders on this. We handed that to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine which negotiates in Europe with regard to trade agreements. We do not have a presence in Brussels so we have not got directly involved in that issue. We have looked, however, at the size of prize and the issue the industry itself is facing.