Professor Gerry Boyle:

One fact should be pointed out. There are fewer cows - less livestock - in the country now than there were in the late 1990s. That is a reality. Clearly what has happened is that expansion has taken place over a very short period of time, particularly in the dairy farms, in certain areas. Sometimes Teagasc is criticised unfairly - and the Deputy might say that I would say that - for advocating an unsustainable expansion strategy. We did nothing of the kind. Time and again, we told farmers to look to their own farm gate first and improve their efficiency before increasing their cow numbers. That message does not always get across, especially in a rapidly changing situation where farmers who may have been used to providing fodder for 50, 60 or 70 cows took a chance and doubled their cows over a couple of years. We say to these farmers that it is time to pull back and look at improving their grassland. The Deputy will be aware that we still have the situation where the average utilisation of grass on dairy farms is only 7 tonnes per ha. With PastureBase Ireland we can track grass growth all over the country so we know that capacity is double that figure.