Mr. James Cogan:

The direct effect in our industry would be a pro ratacut in the numbers involved. Slightly more than 200,000 people work in the sector in Europe, and I referred to the farm demand. There will be a cut. What will happen is that the least competitive, the smallest and least ambitious will fade away. It will depend on which states reduce it first because when it is translated into local legislation, some countries will maximise production. The 7% and the 3.8% do not need to be applied equally over all forms, so that someone could say that they will continue using 7% ethanol and no palm oil, which would be terrific. It is likely that the ethanol sector will be the one that will be the most hearty and healthy at the end of the period.

As for Ireland, we are not here worrying about our own demise, because we are a highly entrepreneurial, fleet of foot, confident, optimistic group of people. While we are very confident that we will be more than alive and kicking, we just will not be doing this. We are before the committee to discuss the principle of the thing rather than our fearing that our own pockets will be affected in the short term. We have increased our staff in Ireland, opened new offices and new companies that are based on the biorefinery concept. We see ourselves as an emerging star in taking tillage crops and treating them as more than commodities to be dumped on whoever will take them off our hands but having them treated as highly valuable inputs in a process that can produce really valuable nutritional feed, materials, energy, speciality chemicals and so on.