Mr. Seamus Scallan:

Yes. There is a lot of potential, but it is not being explored at the moment. If we had the right people working for us and the right committee lined up, we could look at these different countries. It is very hard to have a foot in two camps and one cannot work both for the meat industry and in exports. One needs a body of people who can look into exports, and there is a lot of potential in the Balkans, as well as Poland. We lost our biggest market four years ago. We sent rosé calves to Holland at between four and five years old but they were a bit rough. They were not sweet and were not really good enough for the Spanish market but they were good enough for the Dutch market. As a result of TB in Ireland, Holland decreed that once an Irish calf entered a rearing shed, it could not leave. The rosé calves were to be reared to ten weeks and then shipped to elsewhere in Holland or to Germany, but we lost the market. We should never have lost it. It was a very important market because it kept the price of the Friesian calves up in Spain but all the extra calves now have to go to Spain. As a result of TB, the calves that we send to Holland cannot move out of the units they go into and they have to stay there until they die at one year old.

There are no problems with other markets because one can move cattle and sell them. We have to have ten ships so that they can be called on at any time, and two or three are not enough. The potential is there and we have the livestock to ship. We have the best animal welfare in the whole of the European Union. The Department has always been more than fair and very helpful when we have looked for certification, but the biggest problem we have is the four-movement rule. The number of people involved in this in rural Ireland is getting smaller and smaller. If I buy a calf in the market system, bring it home, and then resell it to a farmer, it involves three movements. Is that right?