David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his response. I welcome the setting up of this forum because a certain amount of information needs to be given to farmers and others who are concerned about it. Would the Minister agree that, if the ratings are reduced, this would result in fewer high-quality exports, fewer animals hitting local marts every week and fewer top-quality animals going to factories, which would result in less income for the country through exports and cattle sales and less income for already struggling beef suckler farmers? Would he also agree that factories would need to kill a larger number of a herd of Angus cattle to make up for the loss of these continental breeds, because the other breeds simply do not carry the muscle mass or weight of continental breeds? Has any research been done into possible income loss for some of these farmers as a result of this change? Has consideration been given to compensating farmers for the income loss? Some of them are quite concerned that they may lose a considerable amount of income on this.

See this speech in context