Ms Tara McCarthy:

Senator Quinn has asked a very complex question. The food industry is an exciting industry, as he has acknowledged, and it has experienced phenomenal growth over the past five years. There are obstacles and challenges in the food industry, but every single industry experiences them. Let us look at the food and drinks industry. We have a small home market, which means one must export at a very early stage compared with an equivalent UK or French supplier. That means an Irish company must get into the issues faced by much larger competitors earlier. That is one of the obstacles regularly faced by companies.

Remaining consumer-relevant is also a challenge. This is the fast-moving consumer goods industry, and one must keep the consumer at the heart of one's business decision-making at all times. If one is a small business, having the Irish consumer at one's heart is not going to be very good if one wants to export to France. Therefore, companies must ensure they remain nimble to deal with a complex export piece. Ms Twomey mentioned the changes she had to make to her product category, packaging and the way the product was presented. These are all challenges for smaller businesses. It is the constant focus on getting our industry to a value-added stage rather than a commodity play. We have created huge scale in the commodities, as one can see from the excitement happening tomorrow with the lifting of the dairy quota. One wants to make sure, where we get a great opportunity, that investment is returned to farmers, but one can only do so if one is in the value-added piece.

The final challenge in terms of food is attracting talent to the industry. In some ways the recession has been very good to the food industry, because a huge number of people have come back into the industry again. Over the past five years, everything from our fellowship programme to agricultural colleges have been full, which means that food has been re-established in the career path of many. We must continuously be aware that the food industry will only be as good as the talent it attracts. We need to make sure we have a very talent-filled industry if we want to keep the growth trajectory going.