Mr. Tadhg Buckley:

Our proposal was cross-sectoral, involving both the feed and processing industries, which, as the president said, is quite unique. It was built on a dual-funding proposal, with a portion of funding coming from the State and the remainder coming from a loan system, to be paid back by statutory levy. The challenge with the statutory levy is with introducing legislation. We acknowledge that there will be a challenge and maybe a small delay. We will work with authorities to introduce this as much as we can. If we know that a levy process is being put in place and we have an idea of what funding can come from it, that gives the milling industry a lot of comfort about the capacity of farmers, who owe hundreds of thousands of euro, to stay with them and about the provision of credit. It helps financial institutions to ensure that farmers can continue to get support. The real short-term challenge is liquidity, which can only be maintained in the sector through mills providing credit. That is not their core job, which is to provide feed, but they are now providing a substantial amount of credit, as do financial institutions.

If farmers run out of liquidity, it is inevitable they are going to exit.

On the numbers, Teagasc estimates that 10,135 have gone. The impact from an export point of view alone is just under €70 million. Multiply that out and you have a serious problem. As well as that, where you start losing potentially 20% to 30%, which is what Teagasc is saying is the number in jeopardy, then that affects the core competitiveness of the sector in the medium term. If you take that chunk out then obviously your capacity to utilise processing facilities and all that side of it is impacted in terms of the economic capacity as well. It would potentially have a huge, long-term negative competitiveness impact on the sector. At the moment, we have 250 to 300 farmers. Many people say it is a small sector in terms of numbers, but it is the third largest in the context of output. People tend to forget that.