Mr. Edmond Phelan:

This committee will meet with representatives of the factories or the processing industry when we leave and those representatives will tell this committee that we are crying wolf. I am delighted that this committee is on our side. The processors will tell the committee that we are getting substantially more than we were getting four or five years ago but that was when the last disaster in the farming industry happened. There is no point in saying that we are up from a very low base when we are very quickly returning to that level.

All of the farm organisations worked very hard last year to open up the live export route to England but within a week of Stena Lines agreeing to ship cattle from Rosslare to Fishguard, we were told that Irish-born cattle in Northern Ireland would not be killed. That was giving us the two fingers, essentially. Straightaway it was decided that cattle would not be allowed off this island and would remain prisoners here.