Mr. Edmond Phelan:

I shall be as brief as I can. Everything is down to control. We have a handful of beef barons who control the meat industry, a handful of retailers and, as Mr. Kent said, a handful of chemical companies control our inputs.

Feed lots control the marketplace. I have written about the issue for a long time and some people have claimed that I try to talk down prices. All I want is for farmers to hear a realistic view. People may feel they are paying too much but I do not know about that. I do know that the man who produces store cattle must get paid as well.

A big mistake was made a few years ago when the ban on below-cost selling was removed. Retailers do not sell stuff below cost out of altruistic tendencies that they may have but do so in order to entice people into their stores. If there was a ban on below-cost buying, retailers would have to pay the producer a living wage and could do what they wanted with the product afterwards. If retailers buy cheap, they force the producer to sell cheap.

In terms of prices, we all know how bad beef prices were last year. I predict that the situation will be worse next year because more cattle have been born in 2015 than in 2012. Those animals will come on the market at the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017. I do not know how we will get around this problem unless we live exports are permitted to proceed. I am of the view that the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine has paid lip service to the issue and that nobody really wants the cattle to be exported. People have claimed that the current situation will keep jobs in the country. That may be so and in a perfect world I would agree but when production in the factories climbs over 30,000 cattle a week then the price goes down which has always been the way. We have had Harvest 2020 and more recently 2025 where both programmes talked about ramping up production. There is no point in upping production when the price is going down. Last year 10% extra meat was produced in 2014 when compared with 2013. As a result, the price was reduced by more than 10% which meant farmers got less money for 10% extra production even though they had 10% extra cost. Therefore, farmers were much worse off and that is all I shall say.