Joe O'Toole (Independent)

That is a good question. They probably do. The reason it is important is that it is mountain mutton with a small bone in it and it has a different taste to lowland mutton. That is what people should look for. In France, where people value the taste of food, they still maintain a taste in chickens. They sell hens, chapons, which are year-old chickens, usually corn fed. Each one is numbered. They are expensive. They cost €12 in the supermarket but they are available. Beside them in continental supermarkets — and this is an issue on which I have never received an answer — is Irish lamb, agneau Irlandais, and Irish lamb is cheaper in continental Europe, especially in France, than it is in Ireland. I often bring this to the attention of my colleague, Senator Quinn. I do not understand why it is the case. It has something to do with regulation.

I live, at the moment, in north County Dublin, which used to be the centre of the Irish vegetable industry. People go to France and to continental Europe and take photographs of vegetable displays. They want to know why we cannot have these lovely shiny large vegetables in Ireland. The answer is very simple. We apply the regulations here and that is not done in any other European country. I can walk into a food market in Provence in France and see cucumbers, root vegetables, tomatoes in particular, which would not get through the sorting system to get into the Dublin vegetable market. They would be dumped here. More good food is dumped here than is sold in other countries. We need to examine the regulation.