Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the businesses for coming in today. I have sympathy for any business that has to wind up as a result of prohibition. I will not get into the ethics of the trade but there is a worldwide move towards the prohibition of fur farming.

I have some questions and any witness who believes that he or she can give the best answer can come back to me. It was mentioned that Denmark has started to exit this trade also. How closely have the witnesses looked at the Danish model in the context of the compensation package vis-à-viswhat is being offered there and what is offered in Ireland?

I have an observation around the workers. There is a statutory redundancy payment for workers. It would be unusual for a Government to have to pay over and beyond that. I expect that any compensation above and beyond statutory redundancy would have to come through the employer.

On the seven-year cycle, on a good year if a farmer had 1,000 animals, broadly speaking what is the likely profit margin on that? What is the net profit on 1,000 animals? Pick a multiple just to give me an example of what that would be in a good year.

I believe that the multiples of ten years is very high. Even in the worst excesses of the Celtic tiger, with any business that is being sold the best multiples they were looking at were probably seven to eight times. I would probably agree that the Department's offer at the minute of a multiple of five is probably reasonable but I take on board Mr. Reynolds view on that being five times zero. It is probably the case that five years is the right period but we can ask what the baseline is and whether it is five times that figure.

Perhaps Mr. Reynolds could try to explain more to us the seven-year cycle and how that works. I would have thought that the demand for fur, which I assume is largely eastern European driven, is still fairly consistent. I cannot understand fully the seven-year cycle. Perhaps Mr. Reynolds could give more background on what causes those fluctuations.