Mr. Karol Kissane:

Deputy Browne asked a question about the merchants and whether they are giving us reasons for the inflated rate we see in Ireland compared with the UK. As the Deputy outlined, if one looks back 18 months to two years ago, there was not much of a difference in the price, for the want of a better way of putting it. There is a huge gap in price between the UK and Ireland now. I have not been given a direct answer but maybe some others have. From listening to and dealing with the merchants last year, as our colleagues in the ICMSA outlined, there was a gap last year when there was a huge jump in prices over a period of maybe a week or ten days after the war in Ukraine kicked off. We were told the reason there was such a big jump in the price was that fertiliser had to be priced at replacement cost. The merchants, who had purchased fertiliser at a cheap rate in autumn 2021 and imported into their yards, agreed to sell us that fertiliser in March 2022. They told us that the reason for the huge jump in price was that they had to replace it. Then we moved forward to this year and the position has flipped. This year, I agree the fertiliser was bought by merchants, what was not sold on to farmers, in the autumn of 2022 at a high rate. In March 2023, on the international markets or wherever we want to buy the fertiliser, the price has come down and instead of it being priced at a replacement rate, as it was last year when the price was on the way up, we are told it is being bought at the cost of purchase, which is a dear rate, and therefore the merchants have to sell it on at a dear rate. Again, this comes back to what Mr. Rushe said and many of us have spoken about, namely, the need for transparency.

The Deputy asked about the Minister and what really is needed. There needs to be some way that we as farmers can see what is happening with fertiliser so that we can look back and see at what price it is coming into the country and at what price it is being sold on to farmers and see the trends over a number of years. That would mean that when something similar to what happened this spring happens again, the raw data would be there and the merchants, co-operatives and importers could be challenged and we could say, "This is what was happening last year and this is how it applied." A better way of putting it is that the Irish Farmers' Journal studies showed that the profit per tonne last year was €250 per tonne whereas it previously averaged €50 per tonne. That is a fivefold increase in profits that merchants and co-operatives made from fertiliser. They made a huge profit on that because they priced it at replacement cost but this year it is at cost into their yards. We definitely need more information going forward to make sure this does not happen again.