Mr. Jack Nolan:

I wish to come back to Senator Mulherin's point about information. The Department makes a huge effort to bring people in. We have forums, open days and so on, to which we invite environmental non-governmental organisations, NGOs, and stakeholders. For example on 4 December, there is a Food Wise conference in Croke Park, to which environmental NGOs will be invited to participate and to hear all the pertinent information. We are very open about it because we want to be above reproach. We do not want polarisation in the section, because it does not work for anybody. We want to work with people and explain because then everybody understands the different points of view and how we can improve together.

The question of whether we are modifying the cow was raised. We are not genetically modifying it, but we are breeding a better cow all the time. The economic breeding index, EBI, that was mentioned during the opening statement shows a 40% difference between the best cow and the poorest cow. That is one of the ways we can get a better advantage. The same applies with the beef data and genomics programme. We are constantly breeding and improving, because as we said at the start, grassland is the best crop that we can grow in Ireland, and we want to make the best use possible of it, whether that is from beef or dairy. As such, we are constantly improving the genetics of Irish animals.