Ms Isolde Goggin:

There have been no prosecutions in the agriculture sector. The kind of behaviour about which we are talking does not involve secret cartels. It involves people going on the radio and to the press. As my colleague has said, when we note such behaviour we write to people to tell them they might be in danger of falling foul of the law. As Mr. McHugh has rightly said, this is not just a question of public enforcement; it is also a question of people leaving themselves open to actions for damages by injured parties. The purpose of writing to people in this way is not to stir up things, but to say "look, this is where you are, this is the danger, but this is where you could be". That is why the producer organisations are mentioned. We are trying to say "lads, it is bucketing rain and there is an umbrella in the cupboard, but you need to do the thing that opens the cupboard to get the umbrella out for yourself". The producer organisation thing is a shield against all of this kind of trouble. We took-----