Mr. Padraig Brennan:

Yes, I will. I thank the Deputies for their questions. In terms of higher prices and whether they are kept in mind - yes, they absolutely are. In terms of the market opportunities that are identified, the question is about where the premium exists and recognising that there is a higher cost of production associated with organic farming. That is seen on the livestock side in the price of organic lamb or finished beef animal relative to conventionally farmed meat where there is a 10% to 15% price difference. This, likewise, is seen on the dairy side, and the fruit and vegetable side, perhaps not to the same extent at times but it is certainly seen. This is kept in mind and the aim is to position Irish organic produce as strongly as we can where we see the opportunities arise.

I refer to Brexit and the associated difficulties. Brexit has been a challenge and will continue to be a challenge for every food, drink and horticultural company in Ireland, not just the organic sector. I am not aware of any additional challenges presented by Brexit to the organic sector relative to the conventional sector.

As to why Germany has been so successful, a long-term approach has been taken there. If one looks at the market, there are so many different regions within Germany that there have been different approaches taken to see where the levers they could pull to get successful growth happen to be. There are many experiences that we can learn from in Germany. I referred to a market inside study earlier. One of element of that is to look at the likes of the German market as a case study and see what we can learn for its approach. We can then feed that back to the sector more generally, not just from a Bord Bia point of view and consider the things we can collectively do to accelerate the growth of the organic sector here as well.

From an export point of view in terms of demand relative to supply, over the past six to 12 months one area that has come about because of Brexit, to some extent, is that we are increasingly being asked about our ability to supply continental European markets that were traditionally supplied by the British organic producers. A couple of months ago, we had an organic red cheddar cheese producer inquiring about whether we could supply it outside of Ireland. We ran into challenges with dairy producers here because of the availability of milk and the colouring necessary for the red cheddar. There was a challenge in being able to meet that demand. We have seen that happening more often over the last 12 months on a specific case by case basis. Potentially, there is more demand in the export markets than we have a supply for at the moment. There are also competitors in those markets. I refer to Mr. Boyle's point from earlier about how we position organic produce from Ireland and keep our focus on where we can achieve the premium that was mentioned at the outset.