Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)
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Previous meetings and the content of these submissions will form the crux of our debate with the Department when it appears before the committee. Every time TB is mentioned, I cannot help but think about what Albert Einstein said whereby insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. We are at that phase now.

Everything is there in the submissions. Everything tallies from all the witnesses' submissions; they are all singing from the same hymn sheet. Perhaps they could give me a little bit of a feeling of how the forum works. Is it working? A forum to me is a collection of like-minded people who come together to come up with and achieve a solution. I get the impression from the submissions and from what I have heard today that the forum a bit of an us-and-them scenario, that is, the representative organisations and the Department. Is the Department as engaged in the forum as the witnesses all seem to be? Are they finding themselves in a position where rather than being facilitative and on the same page, they are having difficulty dragging the Department along kicking and squealing to where we should be as an industry and a business? It is the Department with responsibility for agriculture and, ultimately, the exports and income we are making from the agriculture sector, which is somewhat jeopardised by this. If we cannot get a handle on this, the day could come down the line when it will start affecting our ability to export. Basically, what I want to hear, other than the nuts and bolts of what goes on at this forum, is whether it is working. Is it actually working? Will it achieve what it is meant to achieve? Are both parties willing participants?