Mr. John Enright:

Reference has been made to sustainability. There is nothing that frustrates farmers more than hearing about it. They fully buy into it, but the focus is completely on environmental sustainability, while at the same time the Mercosur deal talks about bringing 100,000 tonnes more beef into Europe, as Mr. Woods said. That is not sustainable and farmers in Ireland are expected to compete with it. If people are serious about sustainability, they will have to step up and deal with these issues. Rather than talk about and preach to farmers about sustainability, they will have to deal with such issues.

The power of multiple retailers has not been discussed. There has been a lot of criticism of other links in the supply chain, but a lot of the conditions imposed on farmers are imposed by the multiple retailers in the name of the consumer which they claim to represent. This issue has to be addressed because more and more conditions are being imposed on farmers. Deputy Eamon Ryan spoke about the consumer having to pay for environmental sustainability. That is lovely talk, but in reality it is not happening. There is a cost attached to environmental sustainability, but if we want to achieve it, as consumers we will have to pay for it.

Deputy Martin Kenny referred to transparency and asked if it should be achieved at EU or Ireland level. I believe it should be achieved at EU level for the simple reason that we sell more than 90% of our beef into the EU market. We need to know what is happening in it in order to determine our prices.