Mr. Noel McGoldrick:

We are here to raise concerns over the seriousness of the crisis in the suckler sector, as has been highlighted nationwide by the Irish Farmers' Journalin its "Save our Sucklers" campaign, a petition which has several hundred thousand names. It has not appeared overnight and our chairman, Mr. Kevin Maguire, raised concerns with the ICBF delegation, including Sean Coughlan, back in July or August 2016 at a meeting in the Tullamore Court Hotel.

In response to Senator Mulherin and Deputy Fitzmaurice, science plays a very important role in everyday life for all of us but figures have to be accurate because inaccuracy will hang us every day of the week. As Mr. McKiernan said, the highest-indexed bull on the books in the country at the moment has 12 carcass records to back it up. That does not inspire confidence in the figures by which we are being driven. The ICBF gave us a spreadsheet with 40 bulls on it. One had 636 progeny and had a reliability of 36%, while the other had seven and had a reliability of 39%. I repeatedly questioned how that could be the case and, eventually, Mr. Coughlan admitted that it had to be wrong. Science is vital but, if we are to use these measures as a tool, we need a yardstick of some description and it has to be accurate.

On the same day, we referred to the uptake of the beef data and genomics programme, BDGP, by suckler farmers. We asked Mr. Coughlan why there had been such a poor uptake if the scheme was as good as it was dressed up to be. It could have been asked by 35 or 36 other individuals in the room at the time because for most farmers it would not be worth their while. Why did we put millions of euro into the generation of the scheme and into funding it, if it is not going to be worthwhile for the broad spectrum of suckler farmers in Ireland? There is no point in being useful for a quarter of farmers and it has to be reviewed in some way.

The BDGP is set up to try to increase the value of offspring from the dairy herd. We are not here today to have any type of confrontation with the dairy sector because beef and dairy have coexisted in Ireland for far longer than any of us in this room, and they will continue to. There will not be any less ground in Ireland unless we build everywhere. Our concerns are that the inclusion of first cross from the dairy sector is having a massively negative impact on the suckler sector. Tullamore farm sold its first crop of heifers in Tullamore mart yesterday fortnight.

At 14 and 15 months of age, the average weight was 330 kg with an average yield of €930 at 14 months. In that same sale, there were animals sold at 12 months of age for €1,300. That is reality. That is where we are going. We can only spend what we have in our pocket. To quote articles in The Irish Farmers' Journal, every €1 contributed to the farming industry is a €4 spend to the economy. There is no reason for us to let our suckler slip. When we leave today, I am sure the ICBF will bombard the committee with loads of wonderful tables, graphs and figures that will convince the committee we are all mad. Maybe that is the case but I do not think so. There are 15 emails from marts from the south east to the north west to back up the worries and concerns we have. The one thing I would ask the committee to remember is that those figures, graphs and tables are all self-generated. There is no audit of them. We do not have a yardstick to work off. The question needs to be asked as to how good the data is and how good the systems that are in place are. We definitely need something as a yardstick to work with but I believe there is a need, firstly, for serious reform in the board and in the way the indexes are compiled.

One very valid point that may or may not be made by Mr. Alan Wood later on is that there is no allowance for feed efficiency. Regardless of whether it is a Charolais or Charolais-Limousin cross, no animal could possibly do 1.6 kg, 1.7 kg or 1.8 kg per day. We have Holstein crosses that are doing 0.6 kg or 0.7 kg and possibly 0.8 kg. Our suckler sector is on a very slippery slope and it needs to be addressed.