Mr. Sean Coughlan:

We had a focus group, which met the day before that herd book technical meeting, that had a broad range of industry representatives, including suckler farmers, regarding how we would best communicate that. Obviously, that plan did not work and I acknowledge that. Deputy Flaherty talked about releasing the top 100 bulls. It is not any major surprise to suckler farmers that input costs have risen. Every suckler farmer knows feed costs, fertiliser costs and contracting costs have risen. When we have spoken to suckler farmers, it was no great surprise the economic values associated with that would need to be updated. That then puts a knock-on cost on fertility, the age of first calving and the age of finishing, the longer those animals are out there. If we continue as a suckler population to have 0.8 or 0.85 calves per cow per year, such that we are getting only 85 calves for every 100 suckler cows in a given year, we are going to continue to struggle, and that is why the economic emphasis has changed.