Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the representatives of ICOS, IFA, ICMSA and ICSA for their presentations. There is significant concern among committee members about this issue. What we need to do can be broken into two parts. There is the issue of the receivership of TLT international and I concur it is a pity it is not an examinership and then there is the wider policy issue for the future.

I welcome Mr. O'Donohoe's reassurance that the co-operative marts can take the hit of the receivership and farmers will continue, as they have for many years, to receive their payments from the marts and none will be left short. That is important because the last thing we need is them holding back cattle from marts and refusing to trade. We should not be part of scaremongering in this regard. I take Mr. O'Donohoe's reassurance on behalf of the co-operative marts at face value. He has stated categorically that marts will honour every payment they owe to every customer and will continue to do so.

Mr. Byran said he wanted farmers to get priority in payment. The receiver is bound by the law and there is a hierarchy of rights, including Revenue, preferential creditors and so on. I would like to tease out of the issue of farmers who sold directly to TLT International and who are, therefore, creditors. We have a reassurance from the marts that anyone who deal through a mart will be paid. The second issue centres on farmers dealing with companies who when they go bust leave them high and dry. There are three elements to this. The first is the credit policy for marts. It is correct that every mart should restrict credit according to what has been done in the context of property registration. They cannot be using clients accounts, which is more or less what they have to do when they give credit. We need to have another meeting to tease that out more fully how we as legislators can address that. We should consider whether the law needs to be amended to say that where farmers deal with marts or meat factories they are granted a preferential payment status and, in other words, become preferential creditors. We will not solve that problem today but it needs to be examined.

Mr. Gilmartin spoke eloquently about live exports and the wider issue for the distant future. If we do not have a live export trade, the meat processors will control the price because we live on an island. The final issue, therefore, we should discuss in the context of development a policy and encourage the Minister to develop a policy on is how we create sustainable live exports in such a way that farmers or marts are not left exposed. If one has a factory, one has many buildings and so on but a live exporter does not have to put the same infrastructure to put in place and is, therefore, at more risk. As a country, while we would prefer to slaughter the vast majority of cattle in Ireland and retain jobs here, without a competitive live export trade, farmers will not achieve the maximum price for the cattle. We need a structured live export trade built on the firm foundations of a coherent Government policy on live exports and not on waiting for the market to make it happen. The issue of credit and so on should be examined in that context.