Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

No. We are looking at them and approvals are being worked on, but slowly, to be honest, because we have a big block outstanding. At present, our bigger emphasis is on urging people with approvals in tranches 1 and 2, who perhaps are doing the work, to move forward to claim stage so we can begin to see the expenditure on this. When we did not have the claim system in place - it was put in place only last July - we were getting quite an amount of grief about it, with people saying that because the claim system was not in place there were many claims waiting. In fact, there were not. They have not materialised. I understand there is significant paperwork to be completed around some of this and that people sometimes submit claims with the wrong paperwork and so forth. However, there is a broader and more fundamental problem here of people perhaps not doing the work, not completing it or not telling us what they are doing and we will have to find a way forward on that.

On organics, there are up to 1,600 farmers in organics, which is approximately 65,000 hectares of land. It is still tiny by EU standards. I was talking to our staff in organics within the last week. Organic payments in 2015 amounted to €8 million and projected expenditure in 2016 is €11 million. There are 1,680 organic farmers in the system. I believe there is a significant market opportunity here. When we were in Singapore with the Minister we went to a massive, very high end supermarket. The manager reached up and took a pot of Glenisk yogurt from the shelf and told us that in his supermarket demand for organic product is increasing by 30% per year. It is all at the high end. He was very flattering about the Glenisk product and said he could sell as much of this stuff as we could produce. At the same time, we produce infant formula for a company that exports globally, but its organic infant formula in China is sourced in Denmark because the volume does not exist in Ireland. We see a future for organic product. People have different views about organic produce, but that is not the point. The point is the market is there and we should just see it as a market opportunity, whatever one's view of the issue.

I am sorry for talking at length.