Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

One can do anything with figures, and unfortunately the Minister of State's colleague is a genius with this. The Minister says the change in price in recent weeks is likely due to a combination of various factors and the fact that supplies are in full flow at present due to seasonal factors. However, if there are a large number of sheep coming to the market at a low price and the price is very high in the spring, when there are very few sheep available, the high price is not much good to the farmer because of the number of sheep coming out. If one looked at the average price paid for sheep, one would find that it has been a very bad year for lowland sheep to date. What is being done to stimulate live exports to maintain competition for the factories?

The Minister said the market was subject to the normal dynamics of the marketplace. Of course farmers will say that because of what they call the hourglass effect of farming - that is, many producers and many consumers but very few processors and multiples in the middle. There is no normal dynamic in the middle. The processor and the multiples have overweening power. It is interesting that the Minister's erstwhile colleague, Commissioner Phil Hogan, shares my concern about the price issue and about what can be done to curb the power of the small number of major multiples. All of the lamb goes to the Continental market; virtually nothing is exported outside the EU at present. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response on this.

I have a second question. Will the Minister of State accept that when the Minister amalgamated the sheep grassland scheme, particularly for hill sheep farmers, most of them were under €150 per hectare? By 2019, all of that money will be eroded because they will be at the €150 figure, but they would have been at that figure anyway. The way the Minister handled the grassland scheme is of no benefit to most hill farmers in the longer term. It was a disastrous decision. What is the Minister of State's view on that?

With regard to milk, there appears to be great confidence that the market will rise. However, it might not. I listened to a report about China yesterday. It said that China might have a classic stock market bubble of the same type that the US experienced in the 1920s. It is ordinary citizens who invested in the stocks and shares. If that is the case, purchasing power will go down. What contingency is in place if there is a collapse in milk prices? The best on offer at present is the intervention price of 20 cent, which is 8 cent below the production cost. What will the Minister do to get the intervention price up to 28 cent per litre?

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