Seán Connick (Wexford, Fianna Fail)

I thank Deputy Cregan for raising this issue and giving us the opportunity to address some of the concerns within the agriculture sector in this regard. As he alluded to, the agri-food sector is of significant systemic importance. "Systemic" is a word used quite liberally in other sectors but in terms of the agriculture sector, this has a turnover of €24 billion and 150,000 employed within the industry.

Deputy Cregan asked about our contribution to the future demand for food. In that regard, over 1 billion people in the world today already are suffering from hunger. The United Nations projections suggest that the world population will rise from the current 6.8 billion to over 9.2 billion by 2050. In order to meet the food requirements of this increase in population, the FOA estimates that demand for food will increase by 70% in that period. It is a considerable increase in demand. We are committed to increasing the agri-food sector's production in Ireland to meet some of it.

See this speech in context