Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent)
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I welcome our guests. I spent weeks with farmers outside the factory gates, protesting for the right to get some kind of proper price for their animals. I welcome any report. I also welcome the appearance by representatives of the beef task force before us. Perhaps our guests will update us on how they have succeeded to date. There were many issues relating to the fifth quarter. Where have our guests got to with negotiations on the fifth quarter? There is a lot of thought out there that somebody is profiteering from the fifth quarter but it is certainly not the farmer.

At the time of those protests, discussions were happening around the Dáil and the countryside, and outside the gates, that considerable amounts of money were being made on the sale of other animal body parts, not only the meat value alone. Different suggestions were made that some people are making massive profit from other body parts of animals and that should be shared equally with the farmer who brought the animal into the world, fed it and brought it to the factory. The farmer ends up getting the least from the deal.

We must open up as large a market as possible for beef produce, including a market in China. Have we succeeded or are we succeeding in developing the Chinese market or other foreign markets? The more competition we have, the better.