Mr. Jim O'Toole:

I will take a couple of those points together. On live imports from Northern Ireland, the figure represents approximately 10% of output. A further 10% in carcass meat imports is coming into the Republic of Ireland. In fact, in the past year, imports from outside the EU, from New Zealand and Australia, have declined but they represent a much smaller proportion. The current difficulties the lamb market is facing are probably not directly attributable to those levels of imports because they have been relatively constant. In 2021, there was a significant decline in French production, which caused a tightness in that market that resulted in prices increasing. In recent months, we have seen the availability of lamb in our key export markets increase. In addition, the fact that Asian markets have been disrupted by Covid-19 means that some of the lamb from Oceania, which includes New Zealand and Australia, that normally flowed towards Asia has come to the EU.

There has been a confluence of a number of factors, although I am hopeful we are out of the worst of it. That is cold comfort for the producers who had to sell lambs in the past couple of weeks but this week is the third consecutive week that lamb prices have increased. Today is the start of the Muslim festival of Ramadan and we are a fortnight away from Easter. As lamb production in Ireland increases, it is hoped we will see demand in the marketplace increase between now and June. Notwithstanding all of that, our promotional efforts to support the sector have been ramped up. We have just finished, in the past couple of days, an additional lamb campaign in the domestic market. In that, we particularly focused on trying to attract younger consumers to engage in the category. It is important for the committee to appreciate that traditionally the cohort that eats most lamb is a little older. We are trying to recruit new consumers into the category. That is something we are working on.

I am not sure whether my colleague, Mr. Murray, has anything to add to some of my comments on this.