Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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696. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the outcomes he achieved following the dairy forum on 21 June 2016; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21117/16]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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In 2015 Deputy John Deasy and I proposed the establishment of a dairy forum comprising relevant stakeholders to as a vehicle for constructive engagement on issues of strategic importance to the dairy sector. This forum met for the first time in Autumn 2015 and since then has provided a useful platform for discussion on issues such as market development, sustainability, animal health, milk quality, the availability of liquidity and price volatility The forum has also served as an extremely useful mechanism for stakeholder engagement in advance of meetings of the Council of Agriculture Ministers. As the Deputy will be aware, approximately €26M in EU aid for the sector was disbursed towards the end of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016 following the agreement of a dairy package at Council.

At my first dairy forum meeting I launched a tool developed under the aegis of the forum to assist farmers with cash flow farming. This was the result of a collaborative effort by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Teagasc, the banks and the processors, and was a direct response to a critical need identified by forum participants.

The fortunes of the dairy farmers and processors are of course affected by economic, demographic, climate, currency and other factors which are outside the control of participants in the forum. However, I regard it as critically important that the policy responses to some of these challenges are informed by positive collaborative engagement among stakeholders, and I very much look forward to continued cooperation through the forum in the future.