Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

The completion of the negotiations on the CAP health check late last year was an important development for the sector. My main aims in the negotiations were to achieve an increase in milk quotas while maintaining the market management mechanisms in the milk sector and to gain access to unspent single payment funds.

I was happy to have succeeded in achieving those aims, while at the same time managing to reduce considerably the proposed level of modulation to ensure modulated funds remained with Irish farmers and in Ireland. We now must consider the longer-term situation and focus on the upcoming review of the EU budget and the shape of the CAP beyond 2013. This should be done within the context of the broader outlook for farming and the food industry in the future. While that future clearly is marked by many uncertainties, particularly in light of the current international economic situation, there will be significant opportunities arising from growing world demand for food and bio-fuel. It also is known that there will be major challenges from climate change, increased competition on world and EU markets, the financial crunch and other factors. We must ensure Ireland has the capacity to cope with the challenges and to exploit fully the opportunities as they emerge. As I stated, to do so, the entire sector must be highly efficient and competitive. It also must be innovative, produce the products that consumers demand and focus relentlessly on quality and safety. If this is done, I strongly believe our export-led and labour-intensive agrifood sector can contribute significantly to our economic renewal in these difficult times, and to our long-term growth in the future.

In common with virtually all the world's advanced economies, we face substantial economic and fiscal challenges in the immediate future. For its part, the Government is making the type of decisions that will help lay the foundations for recovery. For a small open economy such as Ireland's, sustainable increases in living standards can only be achieved through supplying goods and services to the wider global economy. Therefore, we must ensure the economy is in a position to take advantage of the global recovery, when this emerges.

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