Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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I am not happy with what is being attempted. While some of the initiatives are welcome, the overall concept of a closed loop is anti-competitive and it is a bad way for two companies to protect farmers' income. It is a very slippery slope for farmers to go down.

Is the quality assurance bonus, which farmers get at the moment for selling cattle from quality-assured farms, an addition to the club pricing structure? There is a reference to the breed bonus. In the heifer and angus schemes, a bonus is paid, which varies depending on the time of the year. Does this bonus scheme replace the heifer and angus schemes? Does it incorporate Friesian cattle? There is a seasonality bonus but angus and heifer schemes in the past have offered bigger seasonality bonuses than in this case. There is a base price for typical club cattle. I have the misfortune of being one of those farmers that finish cattle out of Friesian cows and I can say that R= grade or R- grade are not typical cattle. If I saw an R on a classification sheet now, I would reckon a mistake had been made in the grading because they are as scarce as hens' teeth. It is disingenuous to produce a table of R= and R- grade cattle from the dairy herd.

Do O- grade cattle qualify on this pricing structure? They do not qualify on the quality assurance scheme.

How many cattle from the dairy herd killed in 2018 would meet the requirements of this scheme, taking into account weight restrictions, age and grade? I believe the percentage of Aberdeen angus heifers which get to the carcase weights would be small. A lot more research needs to be done on sexed semen and it has to be promoted more. If our beef industry is to survive, it has to progress rapidly. Teagasc has focused on cross-breeds over the past number of years but this has also put us on a slippery slope and has to be reversed. The presentation states that the consumer wants this but if we went out on Grafton Street or St. Stephen's Green and asked people if they wanted a closed loop for beef production, they would look at us as if we had two heads. It is incredible and disingenuous to tell us the consumer wants this and will pay a premium for it. I have been too long in the business to swallow that. There is a major crisis in incomes from beef farms.

There is an insinuation that other mills producing top-quality rations are somewhat inferior to what is produced by Glanbia merchants and Glanbia mills. I am a board member of another co-operative that has a mill and I brought this up at a board meeting last night. Last year, farmers were under significant pressure in accessing credit and they ran up large bills but this will tie people into a straitjacket by requiring that they deal with just one merchant. Farmers have experience of credit being pulled from under them very quickly and to tie a farmer to one supplier is anti-competitive. I cannot see how anyone could propose it.

More movement restrictions are also being proposed, with only one being allowed in the life of an animal. This puts farmers into another straitjacket and reduces the options they have as they try to make a profit out of the industry. Glanbia will not like me saying this, but for the past couple of years, its price for grain and mill has been consistently behind the average paid by other grain merchants and processors. It pays a top-up after six months or at year end but this top-up is consistently paid out of our own money, that is, the dividend received by the co-operatives. It galls me that the largest processor in the country uses our money to keep pace with other competitors. Now, a scheme has been designed that will force farmers to deal with that business.

We have to change and our beef industry has to change, and I have been to the forefront saying that what we have at the moment cannot continue. In the beef industry at the moment the question is not who is losing money, but who is losing the least money.

I welcome the idea of promoting calf to beef systems. It is something that is needed. The straitjacket that farmers are being put into is wrong, however. As a farmer and a public representative, it is a very slippery slope that Glanbia and Kepak are trying to put farmers on. At first glance, the club pricing structure looks very attractive, but when we see what is in the marketplace at the moment, it takes a lot of the gloss off it. At the end of the day, when we would be killing cattle coming from the dairy herd, the percentage that would meet those weight requirements would be very small indeed. This was announced with a fanfare a couple of weeks ago and I was surprised by the silence from different organisations in response to it. There was a lack of critical analysis of the scheme. While having cattle killed at younger ages, trying to have sustainable food production and meeting our climate change targets are all welcome initiatives, a Friesian bullock that is killed at 22 or 23 months of age is just not going to meet those weight limits.