Mr. Brian McHugh:

Yes. We will do the investigation. We are empowered to do that under the legislation. If it was to be considered a criminal matter, for example, we would send the file to the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP, and we would have the investigation teams in place to be able to handle a criminal investigation, very similar to An Garda Síochána. We would have those teams in place. We are empowered to do those investigations in all industries for cartels and breaches in competition law.

We would engage with many other agencies in many other industries if there were to be allegations or investigations to get their views on the market and what they see. We have strong relationships with many agencies in the State, depending on what particular industry we were looking at at the time. We would expect with the new office, again, that where appropriate and where we are looking into the agricultural industry, we would have discussions with it on what it sees, what evidence it has and potentially what data it has. We encourage anyone with evidence of cartels to come to us and engage with us. We would certainly welcome and encourage this new office, if it identifies any particular issues around cartels, to come and speak to us and engage with us. We want to get evidence. We strongly believe there are cartels out there in the State. We have put much effort into encouraging people to come forward whatever the source might be. We would very much do that with the new office as well.