Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for joining us today. I do not know if they have been following the debates that we have had on the legislation to date. So much of what this committee and the Department do is locked into the CAP. This is one of the few areas in which the Government can bring measures through the House that will potentially make a substantive difference to the relationship of farmers with the overall market chain. Following every interaction, I am becoming more concerned that this could be a missed opportunity. I have a number of specific questions and perhaps I will ask a few of them together.

Mr. McCormack touched on the issue of publicly available information, on which the general scheme is quite specific. It appears that the new office will not have additional powers to get information that is not publicly available. As all the farm organisations have correctly stated in their submissions, we know, by and large, precisely how much farmers receive for their product either at the mart or in the factory. It is publicly available information. We know exactly how much we pay in the supermarkets for those goods, whether it is here or internationally. The information that we do not have, which is contested and in dispute, is on what happens in between, how much profit is being made and by whom. Do the organisations represented here believe that the legislation will be flawed if the final Act does not provide scope for the office to get that information? I take Mr. McCormack's point that the office does not necessarily need to publish the information, but it must be able to obtain it. My second question concerns the seats on the board that have been preserved for producers. The organisations have made very valid points about the need for them to be represented on the board. We have heard other organisations make similar points previously. I ask the witnesses to outline what they think the overall make-up of the board should be. How many members should it have and how many producer representatives should be on it? What other expertise would the board benefit from having?