Mr. Donal Coleman:

At the moment the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine maintains the database within my own division, so we do not apportion an explicit cost to it; it is merely an intrinsic administrative procedure. In real terms, if one were to calculate it, the cost is quite low. It is not an onerous task and it is electronically transmitted to the European Commission. There are no major issues in the maintenance of it. There are costs, though, in regard to the evaluation of varieties and all of the work we do to decide whether varieties of new crops have sufficient agronomic potential for the country, although that is a slightly different question. The maintenance of the register is an administrative function. While it is early days yet, any change is unlikely to have any significant bearing. That is my view for the moment.