Consumers can expect to pay more for their potatoes from next week after a difficult year for producers, who are currently selling off some of their table crop to feed animals.
Overproduction in Ireland and Europe led to what Mr Brian Arnold of An Bord Glas described as "an incredibly good year for consumers but a disaster for producers".
Already up to 70,000 tonnes of potatoes grown for human consumption have been sold off at prices as low as £20 a tonne for animal feed.
Wholesale prices for potatoes have fallen to a low of £85 pounds a tonne for Records and £90 a tonne for Kerr Pinks.
However, good-quality Rooster potatoes held their prices at £130 to £180 a tonne.
Mr Arnold said that comparisons between prices paid this year and this time last year probably did not properly reflect the real situation.
"Growers could not get their crops out of the ground in the autumn of 1998 because of the terrible weather, and some potatoes stayed in the ground until the spring of last year," he said.
This had led to a scarcity of good-quality potatoes which had pushed up the price around this time last year.
However, according to Mr Malachy Mitchell, who co-ordinates the potato sector for the Irish Farmers' Association, bad weather last September had also prevented maincrop harvesting and had created quality difficulties for this winter's crop.
"It has been a very bad year for the growers, but the main problem has been an overproduction of potatoes in Europe as a whole, which has led to low prices for the producer," he said.
Mr Mitchell said there were indications from Britain that there would be a smaller acreage of potatoes planted this autumn.
"We have no figures on what has happened here yet but there may be a reduction in acreage," he said.
Both men agreed that by next week, when the first of the new potatoes arrive from Wexford, the situation should improve for the growers.
There are roughly half-a-million acres of potatoes planted in the Republic annually by 1,000 growers who produce in the region of a half-million tonnes.