Mr. Martin Keane:

-----and it is very hard to apply science to. The Chairman is absolutely right that we have a big challenge out there to communicate. All of us have a job of work to do to communicate what it is we do. Very few people understand that over the past four or five years, we have increased our agricultural exports by 35% or 36%, we have reduced our dependency on the UK market, and Ireland Inc. has come from a position of nearly 60% of exports going into the European and UK market to, I believe, below 50% in 2017. We are doing a huge job of work on the international stage with international customers to make known the provenance and excellence of what we do here, yet on our doorstep there is that lack of understanding, which is a challenge for us to address. I do not have the answer right here and now, but we will certainly have to be way more proactive in trying to deepen the broader community's understanding of what it is agricultural and food production does. All of us in the room, including my colleague behind me, Mr. Healy, and Mr. McCormack, have emphasised the multifactorial effect that agriculture has right across society and the community. It is not just about food production, but also about the rural sustainability of villages and towns, the employment that is there and the mitigation of some of the migration of people from rural areas into centres of population and all the problems that come with that. We have a message to get across that it is not just about food production, but about many other things. It is about the economic sustainability of rural Ireland and the social sustainability of its fabric. That disconnect and lack of understanding is there. Sometimes one would fail to understand why people would not connect the reality of jobs in local areas and rural communities to the reasons Mary and Johnny have to go to New York. There is a very tight connection between that rural activity and economic activity and food production and the availability of sustainable social and economic activity and employment for people in rural areas. We have a job to do.