Mr. Sean Coughlan:

I will take a step back to address the governance aspects of the matter. ICBF is an independent agency which was established as a co-operative and a not-for-profit registered charity. No profit will be made out of this. It is a cost recovery exercise. The board has 16 members and 46% of our shares are owned by farmers and held in trust by the farming organisations, with the remaining 56% owned by service providers, that is, artificial insemination companies, milk recording organisations and pedigree breed societies. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has a seat on the board even though it does not hold shares in the organisation. It also provides significant funding to the ICBF on an annual basis. What members refer to as a gig or a big contract actually makes no difference to the ICBF's bottom line. The exercise will be cost and profit neutral. The notion that it will be a gravy train is not true.