Mr. Conor O'Mahony:

There was an EBI top-up introduced ten to 15 years ago, or more, at the time of the introduction of the EBI. At that time EBI was new and when farmers were buying animals it was not really built into the market value of an animal. The Deputy might remember it was back in 2000 or 2001 that the EBI was originally introduced. In the intervening 20 years I think there has been an acceptance of EBI among dairy farmers. It is built into farmers' breeding decisions and also their purchasing decisions, so when you are selling an animal on the open market the EBI is taken into account when somebody decides what to bid on that animal. On the live market valuation, the last time there was an EBI revision was over ten years ago. It was €1.05 per unit EBI. That was for the last ten years. In the intervening time EBI is becoming more and more incorporated into the purchase price of dairy stock by farmers, therefore the necessity of an EBI, or more accurately the extent of the EBI top-up, was not really reflecting marketplace activity because it is almost built into people's everyday decisions when buying dairy cattle. That is why it was reduced. The financial working group has started to meet again lately on doing a review of the changes introduced two years ago and one of the changes is looking at how we can use EBI better in the context of incentivising people to-----