Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have been engaging with farm representative organisations about how we can work together on that. I am considering it because there is great potential. We thankfully made good progress last year and we want to continue to support it. We discussed the infant formula previously. The key overall point, regardless of which product we are talking about, is the pre-eminence of the Irish grass-based dairy production system and how it is sought after for all products because of its quality. Likewise, we see that Irish dairy milk is a highly sought after core ingredient for infant formula.

We saw expansion of the herd with the removal of quotas in 2014. That led to an increase in emissions. Our capacity to produce dairy had been significantly constrained since 1984, when quotas first came in. We produce dairy well in this country with our grass-based production system and have high-quality milk. The reason that Kerrygold butter is so popular around the world is that it is a different, grass-based product and that is based on the grass-----