Mr. Jim O'Toole:

I thank Senator Boyhan. I am delighted that he is a keen consumer of Irish lamb and other products. I will touch on some of the issues regarding lamb. The Senator can come back in if I miss out on any of them. We run promotional activity in the domestic market. We try to target it at peak supply. Typically, we run campaigns in the month of June and from September to October. Given the particular challenges this year we ran extra activities from late February until recently. We use social media in an attempt to appeal to younger consumers. We know that because of inflationary pressure lamb is a high-priced protein and consumers are under pressure. Sometimes consumers find it difficult to engage with lamb because it is a big bet for their wallets and they do not want it to go wrong. We are trying to make our recipes more appealing to younger people. We use more modern and attractive cuisines. We also promote them through TikTok, Instagram and various other social media that captures this audience. Traditional lamb consumers are older, but we are trying to recruit people. We cannot forget, of course, that the principal purchasers of lamb are in the older cohort. This is why our traditional advertising on television is so important in the peak supply months.

I will now move on to the market prioritisation exercise that we do. We categorise markets, as I mentioned in my opening statement, in terms of the propensity of Irish exporters to realise the opportunities in those markets, depending on the category of the export involved. For example, this year we promoted the United States to our highest priority category because we saw significant growth to the United States in 2022. It has become almost a $2 billion market. This is very important for dairy and alcoholic drinks. We have seen, for example, that it is a market where there is growth but there is also premiumisation. Therefore, the team in our New York office is trying to make sure that we broaden our portfolio of products and that we are able to bring more exporters to the market.

China is a market that has been very important but it suffered because of the pandemic. In January we had the good news that the market would reopen. We did not anticipate this would happen until sometime later in the year. We fast-forwarded our activities and the trade mission we were planning for November will now take place in May. It will coincide with one of the biggest trade shows in China, which is SIAL China. We will have 17 companies participating in it. The majority of these are meat companies. As we speak, the first consignments of Irish beef are on their way to China. They will arrive before the end of the month or in the first week of April. Our team in China has been working very hard. In fact, the manager of our Shanghai office came back to Dublin for a meeting at lunchtime today. It is the first time that he has returned in three years. He will go to see his parents in Cork on Friday afternoon for the first time in three years. The team has been working very hard to keep the networks of contacts alive and well. As the market reopens they will be able to maximise the opportunities.

I want to touch briefly on the Middle East. Senator Boyhan mentioned the opportunities in Iran for dairy and sheepmeat.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we had the trade show in Dubai, namely, Gulfood, which is a significant trade show for the whole region. Ireland had a presence. If memory serves me right, we had about 13 companies on the stand. We also, in addition to that, undertook what we call a market study visit, where we bring companies out – I think we had 17 companies on that – in a whole range of areas that are looking at the region and trying to understand the dynamics and opportunities. That show, while it is based in Dubai, looks at the entire region. My colleague who runs our Middle East operation in Dubai has visited Iran to try to realise some of those opportunities.

Turning to horticulture-----