Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy pinpoints the particular difficulties facing the market. Additional quota will be useful. The commodity price and this industry have suffered from cycles. We can suffer problems arising from the currency, which can be in our favour at times and against it at others, while in 2007 there was a drought in New Zealand which reduced production there. The US emerged as an exporter and was helped in that by the weak dollar. However, higher feed costs there and the strengthening of the dollar slowed that trend. Undoubtedly, farming practices that increase production or decrease production in any of the major producing countries have an adverse effect on us. There is a limited market.

With regard to the medium term, a couple of years ago we could have discussed the growing affluence of highly populated countries such as India, China and Asia, the changing dietary requirements of people there, the huge growth in population and new markets evolving in those countries for dairy products. That is not as applicable today as it was at that time or a year ago. The only consistent trend is the growth in the world's population. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has produced long-term forecasts on the likely demand for food and has indicated that food production will have to double by 2050. I appreciate that this is no good for the individual farmer who is getting a bad price for milk today.

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