Ireland first made use of intervention during the current milk price crisis at the beginning of September 2015.

Since then, Ireland offered 1,967t of skimmed milk powder (SMP) to public intervention, up until the week ending 4 October.

The Republic has also placed 27,393t of butter into EU-assisted private storage since May, second only to the Netherlands.

However, Ireland did not offer avail of either scheme last week, for the first time in several months.

Ireland stopped putting cheese and SMP into private storage last month after having placed more than 7,000t of each under the scheme over the summer.

This means the past week has been the first one since May without any Irish dairy products availing of EU market support measures.