The surge in calf registrations, up 130,000 this year so far, is an opportunity according to Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney. However, there has to be some fear as to what these extra cattle will do to the supply side of the market in 2017, when most of these become beef.

The factories are confident of handling extra cattle but the experience of what happened in 2014 when 150,000 more cattle came on to the market, can’t be overlooked.

The option of good numbers of these leaving the country live hasn’t happened, with exports of calves, weanlings and stores back just over 20,000 on the same period last year. The number of calves exported live is down 11% at 72,700 compared with 82,400 for the same period last year. Missing from the market this year is Belgium, which had taken almost 19,000 calves from Ireland by this time last year. In 2015 it has taken just a few hundred due to strict new IBR controls.

Stores and weanling exports to the continent, particularly Spain (6,100) and Italy (2,900) are unsurprisingly back given that their beef price is below Ireland this year, although France bucks this trend with live exports up by (3,400). The Netherlands is up 5,300, picking up some of the calves that went to Belgium in 2014 and whose overall figure is down 18,600 compared with this time last year.

Numbers of exports to Northern Ireland (NI) are up a healthy 6,900 compared with an admittedly low figure in the same period in 2014 due to the factories in NI introducing new penalties on non-red-tractor-qualified cattle. This year, with the weakening euro, Irish cattle were still attractive to NI buyers even if the beef was discounted. The need for lapsed NI farmers to get active also created a market.