Mr. Dermot Kelleher:

We all know that the new suckler efficiency scheme is €150 for the first ten cows and €120 after that. It is the choice of reference here, in that you must pick three years out of five. The BEEP is basically all over. It is gone. They took the weigh out of the BEEP and they put it into the beef data and genomics programme, BDGP. This year, between the two of them, the first ten cows are €185 and €160 above that. We know that there has been an allocation in the budget of €28 million as a replacement for the BEEP scheme. That is probably €70 per cow for the first 400,000 cows. We are talking to the Department about suckler welfare issues or maybe testing for myostatins to try to get something to get that up and running. That needs to be up and running for 2023. In the smaller areas, suckler men will have 30 ha running 40 cows. That is probably above the national average. He had €9,000 or €10,000 and now he is probably down to between €7,000 and €9,000. That is all I want to say about the sucklers. Bord Bia was mentioned but a lot of suckler men were never inside a factory in their life and probably never will be. They sell all of their stock on the mart and why they are made to join Bord Bia is beyond me. It is another expense that people do not need. If they need a carbon navigator it is not rocket science to get their planner to do it.