Mr. Eddie Punch:

Something that the ICSA has repeatedly mentioned at various Oireachtas meetings in recent years is how farmers are scrutinised in minute detail, be that through aerial monitoring every five days or inspections at various levels. When it comes to bigger business, though, there seems to be no appetite in Brussels or Dublin for anywhere near the same level of scrutiny or transparency. When we get some progress, it seems to come years down the line and begrudgingly. This is not acceptable.

Some of the other witnesses alluded to the difference in fertiliser prices between the UK and Ireland. I would point to April 2022, when the UK price for urea was €1,065 and the Irish price was €1,157, a gap of €92.

After April 2022, the urea price steadily came down in the UK. It went below €1,000 per tonne in May and gradually came down bit by bit, month by month. In Ireland, urea stayed above €1,000 per tonne. Those are Central Statistics Office, CSO, statistics, not pick and match figures. As the year progressed, it became less significant but it became very significant again at the start of this year, when urea is in demand. We found we were still up against high prices for urea, in the high 900s. The UK started out with a big drop in urea price in 2023, down to about €657 per tonne. By March, it was down €529 per tonne. A lot of urea was bought by farmers at the time they needed it for approximately €900 per tonne. It is now down at €650 per tonne but it is a bit late in the day. Similar figures can be produced, which are in our submission, for potash and similar comments can be made about compounds. This bolsters the argument that greater transparency is needed around this market. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission should examine how the price of urea was kept so high in this country when the international market said otherwise. It is not just natural gas. Natural gas peaked in August 2022 at $9.75 per million British thermal units, Btu, and rapidly fell after that. Now, in 2023, it is $2.40 per Btu. The natural gas price is at a ten-year low. When it was very high last year, there was some cutback in production in Europe because of the costs, which perhaps explains some of the issues in 2022. That is all over now and there should be full productivity. More transparency is needed around that. A key point is that farmers are being given conflicting messages and we do not seem to be any good sense of where the trade is going. Many farmers bought fertiliser in the back end of 2022 because they got signals that it would not even be available in 2023. They paid way too much for it to store it in their yards and they have lost substantial money on it.

Another factor which should be brought into the equation is that the EU has been slow to tackle the fertiliser issue. There was some disappointing beating around the bush in 2022. There is a sense that fertiliser is almost a dirty word in the new Green Deal. There must be a balance between food security, productivity and so on. The demand for the liming subsidy, with 25,000 farmers, is evidence that farmers are committed to the sustainability agenda. I wish to state that. The EU, in December 2022, finally suspended import tariffs on urea and ammonium, except from Russia and Belarus, but that is okay, which were 6.5% and 5.5%, respectively. All of these things tell us we should have been getting fertiliser for substantially less in spring this year. It is almost too late now. It must be investigated. There should be transparency in big business as well as around what farmers do.