Pat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This time last year, the Minister launched Food Wise 2025, a very ambitious programme. There was a target to increase milk production by another 20% on top of the existing target of 50% envisaged as a result of Food Harvest 2020. Considering that the past year has been a very difficult one for dairy producers, how does the Minister envisage the targets being achieved over the coming years?

There is a target to increase the value of agrifood exports by 85%, to €19 billion, over the next ten years. This is very ambitious. Does the Minister believe the target can be achieved in view of the challenges facing the beef and dairy sectors? Additional challenges have emerged in recent weeks with Brexit. There will be serious sectoral challenges and uncertainty over the value of sterling. How does the Minister envisage the targets being achieved? Were they too ambitious initially?

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