Mr. Fergal O'Brien:

There are two elements to this. We have been working with many of our members over the past three to four years on the supply chains, components and input aspects, to help them to understand the complexity of their supply chains - and not just the first layer of them, but also who are their suppliers getting their supplies from. We have seen many companies de-risk as a result of this. On the issue of diversification on the export side, it is interesting to note that our reliance on the UK has been reducing over the past ten or 20 years. Over the past ten years we have seen particular diversification across some sub-sectors of the food industry. The one area that we have not seen that diversification happen is in the beef industry. It links back to Mr. O'Hara's comments on the challenges for agriculture, and it is the sub-sector of the entire economy that I am most concerned about, because we have seen very little practical diversification out of the UK in respect of the reliance for our beef industry. It has happened in other parts of the economy and other parts of the food industry, but it has not happened in the beef industry, and that is worrying.