Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

Our policy has been to protect live exports and we have done that in successive years. It is an important part of the trade and an important commercial outlet for farmers. We exported about 300,000 calves last year. There are pressures. We have proposals coming forward at EU level that we are working with the Commission on. One of the successes in the negotiation on that was that the sea journey is being disregarded as part of the journey time. That was a specific Irish intervention. We are still working with the Commission on that.

There is a judicial review against Ireland’s live exports, which we are defending at the moment. We have events in the Netherlands where there was a motion in the Dutch Parliament about a year ago about stopping live exports. However, we are part of the Single Market, so I am not sure how that could be done legally. We have had some discussion by some of the companies that buy Irish calf for veal production in the Netherlands suggesting they might stop doing that from the end of 2026.

We have all of these pressures emerging and we are trying to deal with them as best we can. We are trying to negotiate with the Commission on the new proposal. We are also working with stakeholders in Ireland to try to make sure that calves are well cared for and that we produce a better class of beef bred calf from the dairy herd. Dr. Blake chairs a calf welfare group in the Department. I do not know whether he wants to say something about the work of that group.