Mr. Seamus Scallan:

I was asked about Dutch or Spanish people putting money into the lairage in France. If one asks them to do things like that, they will only laugh. They are buying cattle in other countries also. If they tell us they want 500 or 2,000 calves this week, they are not interested in how I feed them or what I do with them. All they are interested in is the price at which I can supply quality healthy calves and get them to a destination. It is all down to a financial thing and the welfare issue. As we ship the calves from Ireland, our farmers and exporters should be the ones looking at building the sheds. We want to sell a product, whereas they are buying. It is up to us to see how we can help. We can speak all day about it, but the issue we have is the contingency plan to get the calves for the six-week period. That is what Mr. Doyle has said here too. We need to get those calves out. We need to get something done immediately. We need to have a plan to move the calves if the weather is bad and a plan to increase the lairage capacity. People in Holland and Spain are getting calves from Lithuania, Latvia and Germany too. Everyone says the Irish calves are very good. I have seen the German, Lithuanian and Latvian calves and they are every bit as good as the Irish ones; however, the Irish calves are healthy. They are a different calf and they are better bred, but there is no difference when one looks at them. Calves coming from Germany come 40 weeks of the year and they need the baby calves in Ireland then for ten or 12 weeks. After that, it is fine. One can come and it is not a big issue. When the calves start to come again in Germany, they start to take the calves from there again. They are really only interested in our calves when calves are scarce. However, if we had a plan whereby calves were going on a weekly basis, they would set up a feeding plant to take our calves the whole time. We only have the calves leaving Ireland for 20 weeks, really.