Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I do not want to take a political view, but the milk health check was signed up to by the previous Government to achieve what the Deputy would like to see, a soft landing in the transition from a quota to a non-quota system. With the benefit of hindsight, it has not worked. It does not matter at this stage whose fault that is, we must change it and I will try to do that. The Deputy has been in politics a long time; he knows we cannot just order the European Commission to do something. There must be agreement among a qualified majority of member states for a change to a health check that was voted through and agreed by everyone.

In the Commission's eyes, the Republic of Ireland availing of excess quota in Northern Ireland is no different from Luxembourg using excess Belgian quota. Unfortunately, it sees it as two different jurisdictions. I must impress on my colleagues at the Council of Ministers that the soft landing is not working and a number of countries support that position. Unfortunately there are not yet enough to have a blocking minority to force a change of policy. The Commission says if we want to raise this issue, it is up to member states to do it and we are doing that at every possible opportunity.

I would like Ireland to have the capacity to slowly increase milk production between now and 2015 in order that we do not have a situation where we are operating within the reins of a quota system that just gets released after April 2015, resulting in a 15% to 18% increase over a 12 month period in the volumes of milk produced in Ireland. Supply problems would result from that in terms of dealing with that increased quantity and there is potential for price problems as a result of that significant increase, which is not in anyone's interest across the EU. We need a transition where there is a gradual increase in the volume of milk produced across the European Union in countries that want to produce more and we should be able to facilitate that at a time when the EU quota for milk is about 5% to 7% under quota.

Five countries were fined last year for being over their quota; Ireland was just under. I hope this year we will be just under again but farmers must behave responsibly for the remaining weeks for that to happen. In the meantime, we will continue to work politically to find ways to be more flexible and change the soft landing approach between now and 2015, using the review mechanism at the end of the year to do that.

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