Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the guests. I will refer to the mushroom and horticultural sector, because we have a big mushroom sector down in County Tipperary, as does Deputy Carthy in County Monaghan. The witnesses have noted the increase in energy costs, the challenges facing that sector and that there has been a decrease by 23%. Is that because the sector is producing less or is there less demand for the product.? If it is, what is Bord Bia doing to strengthen the demand, giving that horticultural peat is a major issue throughout Europe? There is a risk, which has been brought up here on several occasions, that we may lose some of our producers here to Europe. It would be a massive loss to us.

The representatives say they are putting their marketing plan together for the year to come. Do they give an additional push to projects for which demand has fallen, or would they be more inclined to give additional marketing to the most popular projects on the market? The representatives said in their opening statement that the UK is still their priority market, but they note some of it is overdependency. How do we get away from that overdependency on just one market? Does Bord Bia have a strategy?

There seems to be considerable untapped potential in the sheep's milk industry, from listening to the lads here the last day. Is it just market research with which Bord Bia can help such an industry? Can it do something to identify the gaps? Do the representatives see potential in sheep's milk being as big an industry as seems possible, with other countries dropping out of the market, because of climate change? The lads were saying here the last day that we have an ideal climate for producing sheep's milk. Can we replace in Ireland, with the proper set-up, what has been lost in Europe?