Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I said, intervention and aids to private storage, APS, would not be, I believe, of much benefit in the context of the beef sector. They are instruments that are available under the CMO regulations that could be of benefit in other commodity areas, perhaps the cheddar cheese area or on the pork side, for example. I do not want to rule anything out. In my opinion, intervention is not the best way to deal with what could be a very challenging sector for beef. The challenge for us, in the context of the UK market, is to keep our product there while we get to a situation where we negotiate a comprehensive free trading agreement. We hope that this will happen in an orderly way, but in the event of a crash out, exceptional aid will be required. This has been provided for as well and has been deployed previously by the Commission in the context of the Russian market and the Baltic states, for example. There is some experience but this situation is of a scale that is much different and much more significant than that incident. For this reason, I believe exceptional aid will be necessary in the context of the beef industry. This aid, as I have always said, will be a combination of exceptional aid, APS, intervention mechanisms available under the Common Market regulations and Exchequer funding.

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