A 70 per cent fall in Irish apple yields this year means most of the apples eaten over Hallowe'en were imported.
One of the country's most experienced fruit experts, Mr Harry O'Brien, said yesterday this has been one of the worst years for apple production on record.
"A combination of things starting with a mild winter, early blossoms and a bad frost after Easter, hit the apple crop very badly this year. While many trees tried a second blossom, fruit never set on many of the trees and we estimate that the crop yield will be down by 70 per cent this year," he said.
Mr O'Brien, a Teagasc specialist in fruit growing, said growers, who had their best ever year in 2001, had reported very low yields this year. "We import about €40 million worth of apples each year but I expect that will go up this year because of the low harvest," he said.
"We have about 1,500 acres of orchards in the State and about 500 acres of these are for the cider industry," he said. Despite the bad harvest, Mr O'Brien, who is based in Co Carlow, is convinced that the Irish eating apple cannot be beaten for taste. "Most of the eating apples we import are hard and either red or green but our eating crop are soft and splashed with colour," he said.
Mr O'Brien has been advocating orchard production as a rural development enterprise because it is a labour intensive industry. "People are needed in large numbers to pick apples and to prune trees. The apple industry would allow a lot more people remain in rural Ireland," he said.