Ms Rowena Dwyer:

Some of the issues that have been raised are live and, because of Brexit, are in a focus that they have not been in before in terms of whether there are actual opportunities for import substitution for different food products. There certainly are opportunities. We are going to see changing trade patterns because of there being more challenges to trade with the UK in products that traditionally went over and back. We have already seen some of our own companies looking more at the domestic market opportunities and growing from there.

It is a long-term issue and one of balance. In regard to the food strategy that is being developed - the ten-year strategy being led by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Minister - one of the things it is looking at is land use, biodiversity and what the balance of our agriculture should be into the future. The challenges are always going to be down to whether something is economic to scale up and to grow.

If I could pick up on one point raised by the Senator which really links into that, it is the entire climate change issue and the opportunities that arise from it. From an Enterprise Ireland perspective, along with the rest of Government, we now have a focus on supporting companies to address that challenge, but also on supporting companies that can provide solutions and opportunities in that area, which is critical. To go back to agriculture in this regard, it is a question of supporting our agricultural technology companies to enable primary agriculture to be more emissions efficient, to reduce carbon emissions and to enable food production to be more sustainable. We have a key group of companies that are developing solutions in that area. This is about supporting them to provide more of those solutions and, thereby, to go back down the food supply chain, enabling Ireland to continue to have a sustainable primary food production sector that is critical.