Mr. James Cogan:

Senator Lombard asked about the extent to which this is important to agriculture. It is important. I spend much of my time in Brussels where so much of what impacts us in Ireland gets decided. There is nearly a divide-and-conquer thing going on whereby something may not be screamingly important to us here today, but it is important to other people over there. If our farm sector gives away Europe-wide €6 billion or €7 billion per year of demand on the basis that it is not very important to us right now, it will have an impact.

It softens the market for everybody and it is one big connected market.

The other issue here is that many things are eroding away at the farming sector and at farm life. There is this particular matter, of course, there are international trade talks, there is the current battle over the Mercosur countries that we may well lose, and there is Brexit, which will obviously affect us very specifically. I would consider it a positive development if we were to think about this on a European level and defend the farming sector in general against any kind of legislative manoeuvres that would erode the ability to make a living in this sector. We should stoutly do this. I also think that we have been supported in our stance on Mercosur by many countries who do not really care very much about beef but who see agriculture as something worth defending across the board. We should belong to that cohort of countries, including both France but also the central and eastern European countries, that are ready to stand up and be counted on every battle and on every front that is eroding away at agriculture. That is my main point here.