Pat O'Neill (Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank witnesses for the presentation. The statistics put before the committee are interesting. Listening to Mr. Murphy, one would believe there is no future for liquid milk production in this country. What does he think is a realistic price margin for liquid milk producers to receive? We dealt with that in the discussion with the previous groups in terms of the tables the agency produced. There has always been downward pressure. I do not know if Mr. Foster wants to comment on that but Mr. Foster represents the retailers. Listening to the presentations from Mr. Murphy and others, it appears the primary producer and the processor believe the major retailers have all the cards in their deck and that they are putting pressure on both the primary producer and the processor. As a retail representative, Mr. Foster might want to comment on that.

I might have misunderstood him but I thought Mr. Murphy said we might be over-producing by 10% in liquid milk production. He mentioned that we are producing 21% of liquid milk and that there might be 10% over-production in that field.