Mr. John Enright:

The first point I would make is that we go to meeting after meeting at the moment. Everybody thinks CAP can solve every problem. First, there is a proposal to cut the CAP budget. Second, if we are to solve all these problems, what other issues are we going to drop because there is only a certain amount of money in the budget? More and more objectives are being set out and more and more demands are being placed on CAP, and in my honest opinion, I do not believe it can achieve what everybody thinks it can achieve. We have no issue with power and the supply chain but that has been an issue for 20, 30 or 40 years. To be fair, the current Commissioner is making an effort in that regard but the reality is that the primary producer is getting a smaller share of the final consumer price. In my opinion, food is probably too cheap. Its price does not take account of the cost of producing that food. I would agree with the Deputy on those points but the problem is how we solve them. The idea that we will solve all these problems with a reduced CAP budget is not correct.