Professor Thia Hennessy:

One of the courses I teach in UCC is food business. We start off talking about comparative advantage. Ireland has a comparative advantage in growing grass. We do it very well. We have the lowest cost of production for dairy products in Europe and one of the lowest in the world. I suppose that explains why we are where we are. It is cheaper to import fruit and vegetables and produce dairy products here. It comes back to the Senator's point that subsidies are what are required. I agree with him completely on that.