Mr. Fergal O'Leary:

In terms of the retail landscape, the committee will have representatives from Retail Ireland before it after the break so we could defer to them on specific details. If I had been asked the question a couple of years ago, I would have said there were very few. We have seen a lot of entrepreneurship in the past couple of years, however. Something that is a feature of every town, village and city in the country is an increasing amount of direct selling through farmers' markets and artisan markets. There is definitely a place for those and their promotion in terms of consumers. To go back to consumer expectations, there is a legitimate point to the effect that consumers want everything and sometimes, we do not always think that far ahead about it. We are seeing more choice being given to consumers and consumers getting more segmented in terms of what they respond to. Some consumers solely purchase Fairtrade and organic produce but other people do not have the luxury to afford those types of products. At the moment there is more choice available, which we support but we hope that choice is maintained in the future. Obviously there are important questions around how the agrifood market can feed into and support that in the long term, which is the ultimate aim of the proposed directive.