Mr. Marcus McCabe:

The point is there is no hemp. We are importing hemp into the country at present. It is even more difficult now because there are customs problems due to Brexit and significant transport costs in bringing it in from Europe. We should be growing it here. We need an industry and investment in it. To give an idea of the scale, 1 acre will supply approximately 100 consumers with food products, while 5 acres will build a house. If we want to build 10,000 houses from hemp, that is 50,000 acres straightaway, which will also produce food. It can be seen very quickly that this is an enormous crop. In fact, hemp is our oldest agricultural crop. It is our most useful and multipurpose crop. We need to invest in it and remove the sanctions. We need insurance, banking and multi-agency involvement as opposed to multi-agency sanctions. That will transform the situation very quickly.

There is a fortune waiting. We have an ideal climate and it is a sin that we are doing exactly the wrong thing instead of exactly the right thing. It is great to have this opportunity to put across the potential. We just need to get our heads together. We have been asking very patiently for a meeting about the regulation. Let us be honest about it; it all comes down to the issue of THC. If vintners were sitting in front of the committee, they would be complaining about being closed down for a thimbleful of shandy. That is just a very simple analogy of where we are with THC. It simply does not make any sense. We need to be adult. We need to grow up and look at how we can unleash this industry that will bring a lot of wealth into the country.