Mr. Angus Woods:

It is unfortunate that Deputy Eamon Ryan has left. There is a lot of talk about getting European and Irish consumers on board. We have to bear in mind when looking at policies for our beef sector that we are an exporting country. We supply the European market. Cheap, substandard imports coming into the European market have a negative effect on the Irish beef sector. We cannot have a CAP that instructs Irish and European beef farmers to produce a product at a standard way above whatever is produced around the world and yet have a trade policy allowing a product in which pulls the bottom out of the market. That cannot happen and the CAP has to reflect that.

Deputy Cahill spoke about beef farmers having become dependent on CAP. The reality is that beef farmers have had a high level of dependence on CAP payments for a long time. It is not that they have just become dependent in the last couple of years.