Food has been priced too low for too long and consumers are going to have to get used to paying more for it, Tirlán CEO Seán Molloy has said.

The dairy industry is going to have to invest hundreds of millions of euro in order to meet sustainability standards in the coming years, Molloy said while speaking at the launch of Bord Bia’s Export Performance and Prospects Report for 2024/25.

"If our consumers want - and they do - the highest safety and food quality standards in the world, if they want us to achieve - and they do - very high sustainability standards, if our consumers want to be sure that whether it's a snow storm or a pandemic, that they can still go out to their store and reach out and have every product on the shelf, they're going to have to pay for it," he said.

If consumers are not prepared to pay more, he said that the guarantee of security of supply will not be there as it was in the past.

Labour

"Ireland is a high-cost economy and that comes with a developed economy - we are fully employed as a nation and labour is a high cost, but we need to be able to reward labour. If we don't, we won't get it, be that on a farm or in a processing entity.

"Our energy costs are at the higher end of the European scale. We are going to have to spend substantially on farm and at processing on sustainability infrastructure to reach the regulatory requirements that are there in front of us. Competitiveness will be an increasing challenge," he said.

2024 review

Reflecting on 2024, Molloy said that despite a tough start to the year with regulatory concerns on farmers' minds early on, it finished on quite a positive note.

"We were forecasting milk supply to be back about 5% last spring, early summer. We've probably ended up the year marginally back on the previous year, which is an incredible outcome and it speaks to the resilience of our farmers.

"From a very challenged start, we ended up at the end of 2024 in a very positive and optimistic place," he said.

A shortage of supply in many of the developed dairy economies had a positive impact on markets and brought to the fore the concept of food security, he said.

Exports

The value of Irish food and drink exports rose by 5% to a record €17bn in 2024, according to Bord Bia.

Dairy held the largest share of the agri-food export market, accounting for €6.3bn of the total, a figure with little change compared with 2023.

Meat and livestock exports rose 6% to €4.3bn, with the EU accounting for 44% of the total and the UK in a close second at 42%.

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Irish food and drink exports hit record €17bn in 2024