Mr. Andy Doyle:

I again thank the committee for the invitation. I wish to reinforce some of the things that have been said. We believe the tillage sector has been discriminated against over decades because of the way policy is formed in Ireland. We were glad to be a participant in the Food Vision 2030 tillage group report, which outlines a number of possible courses of action to correct some of the problems in the future.

As has been said, we suffer from an issue with high input prices in Europe caused by a myriad of different things. Against that, we also suffer from a scenario where we have high costs that are sometimes, or mostly, outside our control as they are driven by European policy and other policies. As a matter of form, I was told the other day that one of our nitrogen fertilisers, urea, might cost €150 a tonne extra for the coming season because of a combination of a ban on standard urea and the introduction of the CBAM tax. These are the issues that are facing us, and they are real issues for the future.

The background is that we have supply and demand issues. We produce roughly 1.8 million tonnes of feed grains and import just under 5 million tonnes, yet we have to get rid of some of our own in order to make room in the stores. There is something wrong when that happens.

I will finish there. That is the essence of where the whole thing is pointing and the problems in the tillage industry.