Mr. Sean Ryan:

On that, we have a farm shop at home in the yard and since Covid we have seen the advent of online shopping. I went out on my road two weeks ago and the Dunnes Stores van passed, I went two miles down the road and the Tesco van passed and I went to the local village and the SuperValu van was in it. Covid really landed into the laps of the supermarkets and helped them to an untold degree. People do not realise how much people are shopping online, pressing a button and getting their groceries delivered to their doors. That is the way it has gone and that is where we see it in the potato business.

On what was said about the onions, from speaking to growers all the time, apart from the price their biggest problem is that most of them are 55 to 60 years of age and they have never worked as hard in their lives because they cannot get drivers or people to work. They are out at all hours of the night and morning doing jobs that they had someone doing for them years ago but now they have to go and do it themselves. They are just getting burned out and that is the second reason we are losing growers.