Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

We spoke at a very senior level to representatives of the European Commission yesterday. If a Government programme is put in place we will need to get state aid approval anyway. We outlined to the European Commission that this is an emergency that is outside the control of the particular industry. We outlined that we would naturally seek support for aid to private storage and that we would also seek financial support for whatever programme or programmes we finalise. We alerted the European Commission to it, outlining to it the possible routes we might take. We hope to finalise talks with processors as early as possible. While I do not want to keep repeating ad nauseam, it is extremely important that processing gets going again for the sake of employees and for the sake of the industry regaining market share. Obviously the animal welfare issue will also come down the road at us fairly rapidly if processing does not resume.

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