Mr. Cormac Healy:

I thank the Senator. I am familiar with the report. I do not accept many of the characterisations in it. I wish to make a point that I believe was provided to the committee in evidence in some of its previous hearings. The meat industry, or the agriculture sector, received in 2020 less than 10% of the permits that were issued overall in the country by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. That was while there was a quota in existence. Any permits that have been made available in the agriculture, meat and horticulture sectors have been quota based; it is not open-ended. Even in a scenario where there were quotas, we got 10% of the permits issued overall. It is not as if we are taking every permit that exists. I do not accept the point made.

As far as we are concerned, the report produced by MRCI does not characterise the working environment or the approach of the companies that we represent, which comprise a large majority of the companies in the primary processing sector. I do not know what way I can say this other than to say we are fully open to every inspection by a competent authority, be it the Health and Safety Authority, HSA, or the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. We have nothing to hide in that regard. Inspections take place. I believe the figure quoted in the Dáil recently was 300 inspections by the HSA in meat processing plants since last March. We are open to those and we do not have anything to hide in that regard. Our members do not have anything to hide.

That is not to say that everything is perfect and that we should not continue to work at issues. All I can say to the Senator is that we do not have anything to hide. We are open to all of those inspections and the more of them that take place the better.