I thank the Chairman and the other members of the Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food for their warm welcome. We are very glad to spend time with them in this committee chamber. Before entering the newer part of the building, we had a chance to attend the Seanad session in the old part of the building. We were also briefly introduced to the work of the Dáil.
Allow me to use this opportunity to briefly introduce to the joint committee the system in operation in our country. The Slovenian Parliament does not have two Houses; it has only one with 90 MPs, of whom 88 are elected. There are two representatives of the minorities, one representing the Italian minority and the other the Hungarian minority.
As our constitution sets out, we have a proportional system of elections under which a party must receive 4% of the votes to be elected to the Parliament. At present seven political parties are represented. The present coalition consists of four political parties. The Opposition consists of three.
Allow me to introduce the members of the delegation, who are representatives of different political parties. I am accompanied by Mr. Geza Dzuban, who is the representative of the biggest Opposition political party, the Liberal Democrats, and has been a member for four years; Mr. Borut Sajovic, a member of the same political party — this is his first time elected; Mr. Franc Susnick, who is in his third year as an MP and a member of the Slovenian Democratic Party, which is currently the largest party — of the 90 MPs, 29 are representatives of this party and include the Prime Minister; and Mr. JanezKramberger, who is a member of the Slovenian People's Party, one of the four Government coalition parties, and a former chairman of the committee.
This is my second mandate. I am a member of New Slovenia, the Christian People's Party, which is a member of the European People's Party. On 1 May 2004 Slovenia became a full member of the European Union. This was followed by our first European Parliament elections in June, to which seven Slovenians were elected.
Today we visited the Irish agricultural institute and are very excited about what we saw there. We also visited Woodpark stud and farm and had discussions with trade unions.
I will refer to our agriculture industry and outline some statistics. As Slovenia is a small country, our agriculture industry is considerably smaller than Ireland's. Its total contribution to GDP is less than 3%, including the processing industry, which employs between 6% and 7% of the workforce. The value of the agriculture industry contribution is €500 million, of which half is accounted for by arable and crop production and half by animal husbandry. The core business of animal husbandry is beef and milk production, similar to Ireland. Taking into account the geographical structure of Slovenia, cattle breeding is the most prosperous sector. Sheep production has also been on the increase. We have 500,000 head of cattle, of which 250,000 are cows and heifers, as well as 200,000 pigs.
We produce 70,000 tonnes of sugar per year but use a little more, 100,000 tonnes. We produce 100 million litres of wine. Until recently Slovenia accounted for between 3% and 4% of the world's hop production. More than half of the country is covered by forests. That is why forestry is very interesting for us. As the country has a short coastline, only 42 kilometres, fisheries do not represent a large part of our agriculture industry. We are self-sufficient in milk and poultry production but need to import other products. Slovenia achieved a milk quota of 640,000 tonnes in negotiations. The same goes for poultry. We produce more than we consume.
We have heard a lot about the statistics for Ireland during our meetings and realise how beautiful a country it is. Agriculture is much simpler than in our country, taking into account natural conditions. There is a lot of flat land in Ireland compared to Slovenia. We have high mountains. We have also learned that at least half the income from agriculture in Ireland comes from subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy.
There are three veterinarians and two agrarians in the delegation, which means we are well versed in the topics in question. I invite questions from committee members.
