Mr. Cormac Healy:

Senator Joe O'Reilly asked a question about capacity in the earlier part of this year. As I said, the industry here has invested and built up its capacity as the sector and farmers have invested and increased output. What can happen at times is that there is a short kind of almost unannounced or unexpected change in flow. Certainly, last year and perhaps into this year, maybe not all of the pigs going to Northern Ireland were getting up there. Largely, I think it is down to the fact there were perhaps processing issues in Northern Ireland, but their domestic production has increased and that was given priority. As I said, the industry here had a 5% increase in slaughterings last year and will probably have 1.5% or 2% this year so it is getting through them.

There are simple things. For example, you could have an additional bank holiday and that is a day out of production, probably involving 14,000 pigs. Suddenly, the list of producers are back for another week. Things like that can happen. Short-term changes in supply can be an issue, whereas the longer-term development and growth certainly will be met by the capacity and the investment.