Mr. Rob Doyle:

My colleague, Mr. James Casey, has been to France to visit our French colleagues and inspect the lairage. The European Union has already funded a considerable increase in lairage capacity from approximately 1,500 to 4,000 calves per day. Our assessment is that there is potentially space to increase capacity in one of the lairages should the operator wish to do so. So far, he has not been particularly inclined to do so, but we have met representatives of the IFA and given them the contacts and details. They will visit France next week to engage directly with the lairages.

We have also engaged on numerous occasions with our French colleagues so they understand the issues. As Ms Barry Walsh said, the Department supports the trade and we understand the issue. However, developing further lairage capacity in France is a commercial issue and we expect that Irish exporters will engage directly with their service providers in France and ask them, as commercial entities, to increase capacity.

The ferry sails three days a week and there is more than enough capacity to meet what is available in Cherbourg. We expect a new ferry to be approved shortly. It has been inspected and there are some issues to be resolved but it has been already approved for pets and horses and we expect approval for cattle to follow. We understand from the ferry company that this ship will begin to sail to France in late March. The good news is that it will sail on a 48-hour schedule. Currently sailings are on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The new ferry will sail seven days a week every second week, which will increase capacity from 12,000 to 28,000 a week if all the lairage capacity is used. That will be a very significant increase in capacity, which should take much of the pressure off the system.