Mr. Michael Dowling:

I do not know specifically why the price fell in February. That point was raised by a number of people on the task force. As the Deputy knows, the task force is made up of people appointed by the Minister but nominated by individual organisations, including Meat Industry Ireland, MII, which represents processors. A number of members asked that we bring the processors in directly, rather than just having the MII representatives, and talk to them about a range of issues, including, as it turned out, the price situation in February. That is what we did. The processors came in and explained, and their explanation was that there was a very large quantity of beef moved from Ireland to the United Kingdom in advance of Brexit and the cold storages, etc., were full of Irish beef. The demand fell in February and the price fell with it. That was their explanation.