Based on the 10.5c/l milk price cut over the last three months, it’s a good job Tirlán chair John Murphy said at Dairy Day that he isn’t concerned about the co-op’s position in the Irish Farmers Journal milk league.

To be fair to Murphy, it wasn’t the only strange comment made during the course of the day, which saw two dairy CEOs and six co-op chairs put through their paces by Aidan Brennan.

Ornua chief executive Conor Galvin spoke at the first session and he strongly defended Ornua’s track record of adding value to Irish dairy. Maybe he knew what was coming in the later session with the co-op chairs because they almost all rounded on Ornua.

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The scuds at Ornua started after a somewhat innocuous question from the floor by Dairygold board member Brendan Hinchion. The gist of which was that the co-ops should be selling all of their milk through Ornua and not be competing against Ornua and each other.

Fair enough says you, but Pat Clancy, Hinchion’s chairman on the Dairygold board, then informed the hall that Dairygold only sells about one third of its product through Ornua. Not only that, but it competes against Ornua in the UK cheese market. Clancy then had a right cut off the new Ornua strategy.

Edward Carr also had a dig at Ornua, saying it won’t take any more than 70% of Arrabawn Tipperary’s butter and that Ornua has failed to leverage the Kerrygold brand when it comes to proteins.

John Murphy also had a go, saying that competition for Ornua in the US butter market is good for Ornua as “it keeps them on their toes”. Of course, Tirlán’s own butter is a major source of that competition.

Next it was the turn of Aurivo chair Raymond Barlow, but rather than turning on Ornua, he appeared to turn on certain co-ops reigniting competition in the liquid milk sector.

When asked about possible merger talks between it and Dale Farm, Barlow made it clear that the initial hurdle to clear lay with the board of Ornua.

It’s in the Ornua rule book that if a member co-op merges with a non-member, then the shares held by the member co-op can be redeemed by Ornua at par value.

As Dale Farm is not a member of Ornua, the board members have the right to enforce that rule, or not.

It appears that the rule wasn’t enforced in the merger between Town of Monaghan and Ballyrashane in 2015 to form Lacpatrick, which since merged with Lakeland.

It would be ironic if the board of Ornua were the ones holding up consolidation in the sector. The question is, which of the board members representing member co-ops would not like to see Dale Farm merge with Aurivo?