Mr. Pearse Kelly:

Deputy Ó Cuív asked about talking to the factory. One of the main reasons we advise farmers to talk to the factory is the processors' feedback to us that while it is fine for farmers to do bull beef, processors must know what supply of bull beef they will get. If one goes back to 2007, one was looking at 12% or 13% of the market which was bulls. If bulls were going to come into the system, processors needed to know how many bulls were coming in, when they were coming in and what their specification was to let them line up their markets and line up farmers to bring in bulls at different stages. That was why we advised farmers to talk to their main meat processors and to develop relationships with them. It is probably no different in terms of steers and heifers in relation to talking but bull beef is a very specific market and talking was necessary.

Deputy Ó Cuív asked if farmers had contracts. Some do. Contracts are not the kind of thing that are publicly spoken about. Relationships have been built up with factories over the years. A number of producer groups have built up quite good relationships with factories. There is no single contract which fits all. Many contracts have been based on talking to factories in the back end of the autumn about a guaranteed minimum price in the spring rather than a guaranteed price in the spring. That is where many contracts have been built up. It goes back again to the need to talk to factories. Where people have built relationships with their factories, they can talk about a minimum price contract. From our knowledge, they are not necessarily written in stone but are oral contracts which have been built on trust over years. Our understanding over the years is that those contracts have always been adhered to and followed through with factories. We have not come across situations in which a price was agreed but gone back on.

It is not a huge percentage of the market and is something we would like to see farmers move towards to a greater extent. Perhaps, Bord Bia can come back in on this in terms of the response. I have attended many farmer meetings over the years where farmers have demanded forward prices and the response from the meat industry has been that it does not have a forward price with supermarkets and it is therefore difficult to give such a price to farmers. That is where it lies in relation to forward prices or contracts. It is something we encourage. We have seen it in some systems. There was an under-12-month rosé veal system in which 12-month contracts were being given. Only 5,000 animals a year approximately were being killed on that market. It was a very small market but that is where the classic contract price was. We have seen a move in recent years to have more contracts over the winter but it has been where trust has been built up between factories and producer groups and individual farmers, respectively.