Mr. Sean Ryan:

The main thing is that growers had stores full of potatoes. I can give one example of a grower in Meath who had three fridges running, and it was costing him €15,500 a month to run the fridges. Growers needed money to pay their electricity bills, or they were going to be cut off. The market came up. I have had packers and peelers ringing me talking about export. I said that this is a very short outlook and that they would want to think of next year. I said to them to go the growers, secure the product and pay them for a little bit of cold storage, and they will have the product.

They did not do that and now they are looking for potatoes that are not there. The growers cannot be blamed for that. If the market was there, everyone in this room would do it. If you are under pressure to pay bills, you will take the market that is there. The peelers and packers did not secure the product when they should have.