Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I object to the Minister saying I am trying to talk down milk prices. As a dairy farmer and a man who represented dairy farmers for years that would never be my objective.

It is incorrect of the Minister to say he has not taken away the floor price. It was written in stone that 109,000 tonnes had to be bought at a fixed price. The Minister has allowed that to be taken away. Let us deal in facts here. Climatic conditions and world supply will dictate the price for 2018. Neither the Minister nor I will have any say in where the milk price sits for 2018, but the fact is that he has given the Commission the weapon to allow it to buy product into intervention at any price it wishes. That was never the case heretofore. The Minister has reneged on his responsibility to ensure there was a floor price for Irish dairy products. Hopefully, we will not need that floor price in 2018 but unfortunately we needed it in 2016. Skimmed milk powder never rose above the intervention price in 2017. Now we have given the Commission a mechanism to buy product at whatever price it wishes. In 2016 it took in all the product at a fixed price and that was what kept the floor in the market but that floor is not there in 2018. I hope we will not need it but the issue will be outside my control and that of the Minister and it will depend on world supply. The amount of milk that Glanbia buys in January for manufacturing is very small.

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