Mr. Mark Cunningham:

Chairman, I might pick up on a couple of points. The banks and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine are acutely conscious of the age profile of the industry. Schemes to help with land transfer and young farmers' entrance to the market, on an unsecured basis or in additional schemes, are being looked at. There are two cashflow issues affecting farmers, namely the tax payments this year and the superlevy issue. We are conscious of the need to be able to reschedule debt where that is required but the majority of farmers in question are relatively lowly geared at present. Bank of Ireland approved over €135 million for land purchase, about 24,000 acres, last year. This is up some 25% on the previous year. On income upturn forecasts, long-term modelling would anticipate a milk price in the low 30's, factoring in an income upturn on that basis.

Deputy Barry was concerned we were forgetting about the beef and tillage sectors but I assure him we are not. They are a core part of the agricultural offering and we will continue to support and lend to these sectors. Interestingly, according to the Teagasc research, investment demands for the beef and tillage sectors are low, the bigger demand being in the pig and milk sectors. On forward selling, we have worked with co-operatives providing commodity hedging type products with a view to the co-ops themselves doing forward prices for farmers rather than us engaging directly in forward selling arrangements with farmers.

Our volume statistics do not include conversions from sole traders to limited companies which would be viewed as a restructure; it would all be new money. Debt levels in New Zealand were examined and there was a collective concern about our farms expanding too far too fast. By our own estimate, almost €2 billion was already invested by the dairy sector most of which came from farmers' own resources and cashflow rather than going into debt to expand. This may cause short-term cashflow problems in terms of the super levy and tax payments this year which need to be addressed. In terms of flexibility and capability and overdraft utilisation, which in Bank of Ireland's case is as low as 20% for farmers, we feel there is plenty of headroom and we will be as flexible as possible regarding any requests received.