Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I wish to share time with Deputies Tom Sheahan, Bannon, D'Arcy, Tom Hayes, P.J. Sheehan, Enright, Naughten and Deenihan. It is clear there is much Fine Gael interest in this issue.

I thank the Minister for addressing the issue as did Deputy Mary White. Unfortunately their Fianna Fáil colleagues chose not to do that and instead gave us a party political broadcast on general agricultural issues, which is not what this motion is about. This motion is about two specific issues, ensuring that consumers know what they are eating and where it comes from and ensuring that food producers can produce food against competition from abroad on a fair and level playing pitch. Those are the two key issues and there is a whole series of associated issues. To be fair to the Minister he tried to address some of those.

The current situation is not acceptable and it is not adequate that when people think they are buying Irish meat they may well find, given some research, that they are not. That is the essence of the problem. It has been a source of huge frustration for farming organisations and meat producers in Ireland for many years. Every time I attend an IFA meeting and this issues arises, the spokespersons for all parties say they will ensure country of origin labelling in the future and that it will be watertight. It still has not happened. For the nine years since I was first elected to this House I have been saying that to the farmers in my constituency, even though their numbers are diminishing now. The motion expresses frustration that despite the efforts to introduce country of origin labelling and the regulations that were introduced last year specifically for beef, it is still not happening because of loopholes. If a side of beef comes in from Brazil and is butchered in Ireland by being chopped, diced, minced or whatever, it is relabelled as an Irish product. That is the practical consequence of what has happened.

The Government needs to show some leadership either by lobbying at European level, which I know it does, or by introducing national legislation. The substantial transformation issue whereby meat or other food is brought into Ireland and is reprocessed or changed in some form and resold as an Irish product because it has been altered by an Irish company is deliberately misleading consumers and giving them a false sense of security that they are eating Irish produced meat with all the associated standards that we have built up over decades in terms of traceability, animal husbandry standards etc. because of a range of regulations that are applied in Ireland and across the European Union.

At the start of his speech the Minister of State said that we must require that imports of animals produced outside the EU meet standards that are at least equivalent to those required for production in and trade between EU member states. We need to continue to press this issue. Irish farmers do not want hand-outs. They want an opportunity to compete with farmers abroad who look to sell their products into Ireland in the same way that Irish produce must compete in other European countries when it is exported.

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