Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

That is absolutely wrong. I have another profession but I trained as an agricultural economist with Professor Sheehy, and the one thing he always told us as economists was to tell the truth, and I am telling the truth to people from experience and knowledge. We carried out those studies 40 years ago, so let us be clear. Beef production output in the EU has gone up by 2%. It is now 102% self-sufficient. Here we are exporting nine out of ten animals to an area that is 102% self-sufficient. That is why we have to get to the Chinese and all those other markets. Some of them are not as profitable as others. I heard somebody giving out about Bord Bia. I always saluted Bord Bia because I know some of the people in there. Aidan Cotter has retired from it now. He was a person who was deeply committed to getting the best for Irish agriculture and the beef and sheep sector and he did an excellent job. I know he has gone on to something else now and I wish him well.

All these things have created a problem, so the current situation is just a manifestation of long-term problems that did not come up overnight. There is no mushroom thing in this. This has been welling up for the past 25 years.

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