Ms Sinéad McPhillips:

The issue of price transparency is not confined to Ireland. As Deputies will be aware, there has been significant work at EU level on improving market price transparency as one of the strands of efforts to improve the position of the primary producer in the chain. As part of that work, Deputies will be familiar with the new EU market observatories that have been introduced for a range of commodities. Additional price reporting requirements are being introduced through EU regulations and in fact, the Department and the task force secretariat will be hosting a webinar with EU officials in mid-July to further explore those issues and see what lessons we can learn.

The new office of the national food ombudsman or regulator will be introduced by primary legislation. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine has outlined that increased price analysis and reporting will be one of the functions of that office. We would see that there is an opportunity for that office to pick up some of the gaps that have been identified through the work to date and to see what additional price reporting is required to further increase transparency.

I will take the opportunity to revert to Senator Paul Daly on that query on the Grant Thornton figures. I confirm that the €2.9 billion figure includes all sales, including in Ireland. What we are talking about, therefore, is farm gate value for cattle sales of €2.2 billion compared with sales in Ireland or abroad of €2.7 billion, if one excludes the processed products.