Mr. Brendan Crosse:

There are two main differences between the support for innovation at primary level in Ireland and in New Zealand. First, the New Zealand sustainable food and fibre futures programme incentivises private investment that recognises an opportunity and is willing to invest in industry and start-ups. The nature of this type of investment is that it has a huge impact across the country but there is potentially a slower return on it compared to investment in technology, marketing companies and things like that. It takes a specific type of capital. From the Department's point of view, it could incentivise that by matching funding and working across the supply chain. A great deal of the research in Ireland is very much siloed. Food for Health Ireland focuses on the uniqueness of dairy milk, Teagasc looks at farm systems and Bord Bia does marketing research. There is no broader research question asking how we can establish, invest in and build a sheep milk industry in Ireland and have a funding pool that can tap into the various capabilities that already exist here.

The second difference relates to the processing infrastructure. New Zealand recognises that as an export country, if it is to build new industries it needs to be competitive on a global stage from the outset. It has established an open access processing facility, FoodWaikato, which has enabled the growth of a cost-competitive infrastructure. It is owned and funded by the New Zealand Government and has enabled the growth of many different dairy industries, including sheep milk, goat milk, A2 milk and organic milk, all of which have been processed there. They have graduated from the open access facility and built their own dryers on that site. The sheep milk industry has now commissioned its own dryer next door to the open access facility. Ireland has a sheep milk industry that is ready to take off. We have an organic cow industry that is being incentivised at market and at primary production, but no one is incentivising the manufacturing of products that enable them to get to market cost-competitively. That is the reality. We did the Food Works programme with Bord Bia. It highlighted to us the challenges of building brands. What Ireland does well is it produces ingredients and raw products such as milk, milk powder, cheese, lamb, and beef but we are not building brands because that is very expensive. We feel - the organic dairy industry probably feels the same - that producing premium bulk products is what we can do in Ireland. We will be cost-competitive at primary level, but we cannot go out and say we will be inefficient at processing for the next five to ten years because we will not survive. We need to be able to deliver that product and that requires support at a processing level.