Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 1 July 2015
6. Deputy Patrick O'Donovan asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will provide details, in tabular form, of the increase in milk production by county and by month this year in comparison with 2014 since the abolition of milk quotas; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25846/15]
View answerAs requested by the Deputy the following table sets out the volumes of milk purchased by registered milk purchasers in Ireland for the months of January to May in both 2014 and 2015. My Department does not collect the data on a county or regional format, because most milk purchasers collect milk across many different counties.
During the period from January to May 2014 some 2.29bn litres of raw milk was collected by registered milk purchasers. During the same period in 2015 some 2.45bn litres was collected, representing an increase of 7%.
Focusing on the two months since milk quotas were abolished, April and May 2015, we see that the volume of milk collected in those months was 1.65bn litres. When compared against the 1.47bn litres collected in the corresponding months of 2014, that is a 12.2 % increase in the volume of milk collected.
This represents a significant increase in milk production in Ireland and confirms the view widely held by both the dairy sector and market analysts that the milk quota regime acted as a brake on the potential of the sector to respond positively to market opportunities. This indicates that we are well on the way to achieving the 50% increase envisaged in Food Harvest 2020.
We have been planning, with stakeholders, for the post quota period for a number of years now and I believe we have the right balance of measures in place to ensure that Irish dairy farmers can enter this new era with full confidence.
With respect to the super levy bill, flexibility has been secured from the European Commission for farmers to pay the superlevy fine on a phased basis over 3 years and I have just recently announced a Scheme which gives effect to this facility. This will be of major assistance to dairy farmers in helping to ease the cashflow burden of paying their superlevy bill. I have also announced a number of other major initiatives for the dairy sector, including just this week a €50m investment scheme for on-farm capital investments as well as other RDP measures for the sector such as knowledge transfer schemes for 10,000 dairy farmers.
While there is still some softness in the global dairy markets, most analysts predict that medium term prospects are good, with growth in world population and wealth expected to stimulate strong levels of demand for dairy products. My aim is to help position the Irish dairy sector to be able to take advantage of this opportunity. Price volatility is a challenge and, while EU market supports remain in place, it is also critically important that processors, farmers and the banking system work together to mitigate any negative impact.
|
Month |
2014 ('000 litres) |
2015 ('000 litres) |
|
January |
125,588 |
108,114 |
|
February |
225,390 |
229,205 |
|
March |
467,362 |
463,587 |
|
April |
681,548 |
761,214 |
|
May |
788,667 |
889,330 |
|
TOTALS |
2,288,555 |
2,451,450 |
