Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It has been a challenge to get more participation in quality assurance. It has come a long way but we need to try to have more farmers in it. That is difficult to achieve. It enhances our overall product. The Minister of State, Deputy Heydon, and I are doing trade missions abroad all the time, and the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, is also looking at it from an organic point of view. It is a massive calling card. It is what the customers we are selling to want to hear about. The Origin Green branding and the quality assurance gives us an additional competitive advantage among the customers we have, and it is increasingly going to give us that competitive advantage. It is important to have as much of our sector as possible in the scheme. It strengthens the sector overall.

I accept the Deputy's point that it is harder because the payment of the quality assurance bonus is made at the end whenever the animal is slaughtered. It is harder to see that when a person is selling stores or weanlings because it is not as tangible. As Minister, I have been able to see how tangible it is as a product when it is being sold abroad. The more value we can put on that, the more value there can be in the chain, from calf to the factory. I am certainly open to seeing how we can make that more tangible at different levels in the supply chain, for weanlings and stores.

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