Mr. Eddie Punch:

To work backwards, we think the funding for the promotion of sheepmeat is woefully inadequate. Bord Bia has stated it spends €3.5 million. It also has another fund but it is a joint EU fund for sheep and beef that is worth about €4.8 million. However, it is not clear how much of that is being spent on sheepmeat. That was being targeted at south-east Asia and a number of other international markets, including the US. It strikes me that there is no real targeted spend of promotional money. There is a few bob here and a few bob there, so to speak. That is a real deficiency in the promotion of sheepmeat. There does not seem to be a lot of buy-in from meat factories either to have a co-ordinated strategy where a decision is made to prioritise, for example, the US and to go hell for leather for that. It seems like a few quid in south-east Asia and no real strategic planning about how those markets will be developed.

To go back to the additional funding for the sheep improvement scheme, it is a problem but it just takes work. Schemes now have to be built on the basis of income foregone and costs incurred. We should revisit how those are calculated because the costs incurred of everything in Ireland now are much higher than when these arguments were made. Generally as well, there are additional measures required in some cases, but I think that can be done if the will is there.

Regarding the amount of money coming out of the Brexit adjustment reserve, earlier this year, when we were campaigning for this, we said that €50 million would provide about €20 per ewe across 2.5 million ewes if pretty much all ewes qualified. There is this question about how why not all sheep farmers are collecting the sheep improvements scheme money. We said it is about 19,000, which is not much more than half. The answer is that it reflects how €12 per ewe is not really very appealing, particularly to smaller-scale sheep farmers. The scheme involves a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy. Schemes have to be fit for purpose. This is a general problem now that we are getting a lot of schemes with small amounts of money and a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy and a lot of actions. The money is completely out of kilter with the economy we live in here in Ireland today. That is a big problem.