Mr. Vincent Roddy:

We thank the Chair and committee for the opportunity to discuss this critical issue. It has agitated many of our members, as we have seen in calls to our office. Many of the points have been made and will be dealt with in questions so I will not get into too much detail on those. We concur with the points made by previous speakers.

We have seen since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 a 123% increase in fertiliser prices from 2021. Initially, farmers were pragmatic about this. They recognised the implications for fertiliser and supply. Unfortunately, they seem to think suppliers of fertiliser have miscalculated. Farmers moved from acceptance to, later last year and into this year, understandable annoyance at the disparity in prices both inside Ireland and across the Border in Northern Ireland. You are looking at a €200-plus price disparity there. The view among most farmers is that a high level of profit has been made by other players at their expense. This was done in 2022 when a good deal of fertiliser was bought into the country long before Putin invaded Ukraine and, many farmers believe, was sold at an inflated price. They used fear to drive that. This year, the view is farmers will not be caught. There is no sympathy for the view that fertiliser was brought into Ireland at inflated prices and farmers will have to pay for the mistakes of someone else. Likewise, farmers will not be bounced into buying fertiliser on the basis there may be supply challenges down the line. We believe farmers would rather risk the shortage of fertiliser in the marketplace than get burned again on price.

For those involved in supplying fertiliser, there needs to be a realisation that the price needs to come down and if there is a cost to that, the companies and suppliers will need to take that from the profits we maintain they made in 2022.

Farmers are quite agitated about this and I am sure we will hear that as we go through the discussion. The price of fertiliser has fallen and continues to fall on international markets and that needs to be reflected in the price in Ireland. I look forward to members’ questions and thank our team here. Mr. Liam Lavelle and Mr. Tomas O’Toole will be taking questions with me. I wish Mr. Keane the best of luck in his role when he finishes up as Macra president.