Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I suspect this question has come from Deputy Moynihan because he rightly asks it, or some version of it, during every Question Time on agriculture. It concerns the milk soft landing.

I have had informal meetings with the new Danish Presidency. There is a new Danish Minister following elections some months before Denmark took the Presidency. Ireland and Denmark are very much at one on this issue but the discussions on milk, as they are developing in the Council, are a little worrying. Some countries are now suggesting we should not do away with milk quotas in 2015, that the period should be extended and so on at the same time as other countries like Ireland and Denmark are saying we are not putting in place a soft landing that is working and that we should give more flexibility in regard to quota management pre-2015.

This is an opportunity for me to say to dairy farmers that they should stay within quota this year. By the end of December of last year we were 0.08% under our quota and if the same pattern of the first three months of last year were repeated in the first three months of this year we will be significantly over quota by the end of the quota year, which will mean that Ireland will get a super levy fine. We must avoid that. Farmers behaved responsibly in the autumn in terms of early drying off, one milking per day, culling cows in herds and so on. We must continue to be sensible in the way we manage our milk output between now and the end of the quota year to ensure we avoid super levy fines because there will not be a political solution to this issue in the next two or three months.

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