Mr. Stephen Arthur:

What happened in England was that retailers got rid of or burned off the brands and put in their own-brand milk and destroyed the liquid business. The farmers walked out of the industry over there. It is as bad as that in England at the moment. There were agents scouring the south east of Ireland looking for milk to supply health and food services in England as recently as one month ago. That is the position in England. It took French milk on the shelves in a shop, a large retailer in Birmingham, to realise they had a problem. That was what started up the consumer agency over there. They had to hit rock bottom before they realised there was a problem.

I reckon we are less than two years behind England and if we do not do something now we will end up in the same boat. We will be drinking UHT milk in the pudding on Christmas Day and that is a fact. Up to 25% of our milk is coming in, that is, one quarter of what we drink. One in every four litres of what we drink is imported. What message does that send out around the world when we should be feeding the world?

The question of whether we want the system used in France was raised. France has no liquid milk business. One cannot get fresh milk over there. People in France buy milk powder in a box and bring it home to put it in the tea. The French system is a Promar lock-in system. A producer is locked in to a system and pays the margin. There is no flexibility.

I believe we are entitled to flexibility in our business. If we get a good year we should be entitled to reap the rewards because we suffer all the bad years. A structure with a little freedom should be put in place such that if a good year comes we are entitled to get some harvest out of it because, by God, we are getting plenty of bad years.

Deputy Deering asked about milk quality. All these things cost us money to produce quality milk. I presume the Chairman is farming cows. He knows what it costs to get total bacteria count, TBC, tests. It costs money. Unfortunately, the way co-ops and processors work means they want everything at the right quality but they do not want to pay for it. A system is coming in at the moment and the Kerry Group and Lakeland Dairies will bring in a system to pay more for better quality. Glanbia is also considering the idea. Obviously the crowd is going to pull it.

The question of loss leaders is a sad one. Let us consider the approach to milk 75 years ago. It was judged by how fresh it was when one stuck a finger in to test how warm it was. What is milk like now? It is like a CD on top of a newspaper. That is what I compare milk to at the moment. Put a fancy CD in a newspaper and one might buy the newspaper. Now, they are sticking milk inside shops for nothing so that a customer might come in and buy a brush handle or something else that he does not particularly want. That is what they are doing. Retailers are using milk to get people in and to get footfall. It is sad. We have the healthiest food on the planet and we are using it to entice people in to shops to get them to buy something else.

Let us consider the CSO figures that have come out. Milk has not moved anywhere. I listened to "The Ray D'Arcy Show" yesterday. Food, potatoes, beef and everything else has risen in price but milk has not moved. The question answers itself.