Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We resume in public session. I welcome the following officials from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Mr. Paul Savage, assistant secretary; Ms Sharon Murphy, principal officer, EU division; and Mr. Tom Keating, senior inspector, integrated controls. I apologise for being a little late in coming to this session, but we had a session earlier with the farming organisations. This is a very important issue for the organisations and their representatives made many strong points to the committee. That is the reason for the delay.

We have received your opening statement and it has been circulated to the members. We are limited in time due to Covid-19 restrictions so the committee has agreed that the opening statement will be taken as read so we can use the time for questions and answers, as we did in the first part of this meeting. All opening statements are published on the Oireachtas website and are publicly available.

There is an important notice relating to parliamentary privilege. Witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they give to the committee. However, if they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence relating to a particular matter and they continue to do so, they are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected to the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable. Participants in the committee meeting from a location outside the parliamentary precincts are asked to note that the constitutional protections afforded to those participating from within the parliamentary precincts do not extend to them. No clear guidance can be given on whether or the extent to which their participation is covered by absolute privilege of a statutory nature.