Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that. We have a situation, however, where essentially we have a market chain. As Mr Jordan said, the fixed price contracts model benefited everyone on that chain for about a decade and in normal circumstances because everybody has the assurance of knowing how much they are going to be purchasing and how much they are going to be selling their product for. It gives an assurance and has a stabilising effect across the market chain. In the here and now, however, that chain has been severely distorted and the difficulty from this committee's position is that only one element of that chain is expected to carry the burden. I get a sense that Ornua is almost looking at this as a charitable endeavour as opposed to the fundamental future of the sector and this model if the current situation is not addressed.