Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also want to be associated with the words that have been said since I joined the committee three years ago. It has been a pleasure to meet Mr. John Keane here and at different meetings outside the Oireachtas. Most of what we were going to ask has been answered at this stage and everybody agrees that while Russia's invasion of Ukraine did not help, prices were going up beforehand. Looking at prices in February 2022, there was only a €71 difference in price between the UK and Ireland in urea but 12 months later, the difference was €317. We appreciate gas prices rose and have started to come back down but surely we would expect the difference between both countries to have stayed more or less the same. There has suddenly been a massive jump and that really needs to be investigated. The merchants did not help either. Every one of the witnesses has said they got farmers to buy through fear. Could the Government or the Minister have done more at that stage to reassure farmers that it was not going to get as bad as what had been predicted?

The IFA proposed that the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission investigate this matter and the CCPC has indicated it may do so. Has it provided any reason that it is not a given when something like this happens that it would investigate what is actually going on in the sector? Each of the organisations has approached fertiliser merchants. What kind of feedback have they received from them on what we are discussing?