Mr. Cormac Healy:

I will address some of those points and my colleagues might follow on. Senator Paul Daly talked about the average EU price and the gap with the price in Ireland and Senator Joe O'Reilly has referenced it as well. It is just a point of timing as much as anything. We have come through a period, as I said earlier, when the processing sector here was paying well above what any competitors were paying.

There was a support level to producers. As I said, we have gone through the last 12 months were the Irish price paid to Irish producers was above what was being paid by our competitors. It was above them. Only in the past three or four weeks have prices started to rise in the EU in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. Only in those last few weeks have they started to increase the price to producers. That will, hopefully, drive on the European market and we will avail of that. I am not party to all aspects of the business but the price increase in recent times was largely driven by work with the Irish market and the domestic scene with retailers domestically and secondary processors. Much of our product goes to secondary processing. It was, therefore, engagement and a push to increase prices through the chain that allowed for an increase. There will be follow-on but as we said, we are not influencers of the market either in terms of our scale of production being less than 1.5% of the EU. There is significant resistance everywhere to trying to get prices increased. If we look at the consumer price index, CPI, figures, as I did yesterday in this context, the 12-month figures to March are still just showing a 3% increase in meat overall. We know there have been significant increases across other sectors be it beef, lamb etc. There have been significant price increases in terms of raw material but overall meat inflation thus far up to March of this year was only at 3%. If I look at those figures, the pork element was even a reduction on the 12-month period.

Therefore, yes, there is much resistance to price increases. Obviously, if we were to try to extract all of the price that is needed here now to go back to producers from the domestic market, we would see some serious inflation in the Irish markets. We must, therefore, look at export markets and international markets. It takes a bit more time for that rising tide to come through and deliver it. The view is that with the inflation that has taken place in the cost of production across the board in Europe, Ireland and elsewhere, it is going to have to drive prices everywhere and then we get to benefit from an increased return from the market.

In terms of volume, various questions were asked around whether we have issues with the supply of contracts etc. Senator Joe O'Reilly also talked about the impact of a 10% reduction in output here. At the moment, what that 10% reduction would do is to undermine the efficiency of individual pig farms and pig units. If somebody is trying to stay in this business, the last thing he or she wants to be doing is putting 90% less product through and adding to his or her overhead. I think it will have an efficiency impact and it would not be something of which we are at all supportive. As we also said at the beginning, it is completely meaningless in terms of the impact, or thinking that it will have any impact, on European or global markets. It makes no sense.

I will hand over to Mr. Carroll to address Deputy Michael Collins's questions.