Mr. Nigel Sweetnam:

There are three strands to us getting money back into the poultry industry. The first is the regulator to make sure we do not end up in this situation again. In the short term, we need a price increase for our product. I have seen 20 years of false dawns in renewables. I had one of the first biomass boilers that could actually burn poultry litter and produce energy. We could have a carbon-neutral chicken and produce electricity and heat from the litter under the chickens. Two thirds of the litter would produce enough energy to rear that chicken but that needs to be supported. It is being supported everywhere else in Europe. We are competing against chickens in Northern Ireland. Twenty years ago, I put a boiler into my farm. If I put in the same boiler in Northern Ireland, I would be getting £79,000 per year in a subsidy. Here, I got nothing. I had the first licence in Europe to burn poultry litter. We have spoken about renewables here but that is all we have done. We have just paid lip service to it. The only green measure we have had to date has been a carbon tax, which is another joke. Paying VAT on carbon tax is crippling us. It is a tax on a tax. This is one area we could look at immediately. Carbon tax could be suspended or at a minimum, we could ensure that no VAT is applied to it. To go back to electricity, every poultry house in Ireland should have solar panels on the roof. It is a no-brainer. There are huge sheds, the facility and usage are there and it is 24-7 so whatever power that is produced during the day will be used inside the poultry house and that can be supplemented. Reverse metering on electricity is not a big ask. The Minister announced targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS, funding in this regard but limited it to 5 kW or 12 kW. That is a domestic house, not a poultry farm.

Those are three areas. We need an immediate price increase to keep the show going. We have seen guys getting their returns back from the factories and because they are paid by the processor, their energy bills are double what they were this time last year. When we protested outside supermarkets, we saw there was a willingness on the part of the public to pay an additional 15 cent or an additional 2 cent for the egg guy. Some of the discounters were offering half of what we needed but that is just not an option. We have to get cost recovery and that is only to maintain our margin. We are not looking to improve our margin. In the long term, we are looking for the regulator in order that we are not in this situation. Another thing we are looking for is proper support in renewables, not just lip service.