Mr. Gerry Lynskey:

The Chairman asked for a more positive and solution-oriented approach. We have touched on all the issues in the past hour. Our basic message is that national databases should be retained in the public domain while farm software is best handled in the private sector.

On Senator O'Neill's point on the need for balance, Mr. Lynch and I were promoting our software at a national livestock event at the NEC in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago. There were two Irish companies and at least a half dozen English and Scottish companies promoting farm software - there may also have been a Welsh company - at the event. The Irish dairy sector is roughly the same size as the English dairy sector, while the Welsh and Scottish dairy sectors are insignificant. Why are six companies in Britain and only two companies in Ireland pursuing markets of roughly the same size? Put another way, there were six companies operating in the Irish farm software sector ten years ago when farmers were much less computer-literate than they are now. Why has the private sector been squeezed out of the market here and not in Britain? I am not arguing that Britain must serve as the model for Ireland. However, the UK market happens to be the market I know best. Britain also has a number of national bodies and while some people will argue they are not as effective as our national bodies, they seem to have struck a better balance between public and private than we have.