Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)
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Ornua has fixed prices with co-ops. Those in Ornua are business people, and very successful business people. Ornua has a fantastic model and while all of us here today are trying to be critical to an extent, we cannot be so without acknowledging the success story that Ornua is, and its profits are there for everybody to see. Naturally, I presume that when it is doing a fixed-price contract with the co-ops, its job is to hammer them down and to get that as low is it can. Ornua has to be thinking of its margin. Is that not leaving the co-ops in a position where they have to get as much milk at a fixed price below that again to leave them a margin? Therefore, while Ornua is not directly dealing with the farmers, for one third of the 1 billion litres, it is determining the price of that milk. Once Ornua does a fixed-price deal with a co-op, that co-op manager or purchasing manager who is negotiating the fixed milk price with the farmer has his hands already tied by Ornua. He cannot go a cent more than X or he will not have his margin on his product before it gets to Ornua.