Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I will share a moment of my time with Deputy John Browne.

I request that Dáil Éireann calls on the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and his Government colleagues to ensure that malt and malting barley production is retained in Ireland as a condition of any proposed sale of Greencore Malt to a foreign food company. We are all concerned at reports in the media in recent weeks of the sale of Greencore Malt. A number of approaches have been received by Greencore plc. I understand a French company, Soufflet, visited Ireland more than a week ago to inspect the various facilities of Greencore Malt as part of this process.

Approximately 1,500 Irish farmers grow 130,000 tonnes of malting barley each year and this has been the case for generations with an excellent tradition in many counties, including Laois, Kildare, Carlow and Wexford. It is a valuable premium crop and I am concerned that if this does not continue those farmers would grow feed barley, leading to an excess of feed barley production in the country, with a knock-on effect on prices. There is a malting plant in Athy and depots in Stradbally and Emo in County Laois and I am concerned at reports that they may close early in the new year. I also understand there are four depots in Wexford.

Greencore Malt was formed at the beginning of 2000 with the integration of three Greencore-owned malting companies, namely, Minch Malt in Ireland, Belgomalt in Belgium, and Pauls Malt in the UK. The company has 500,000 tonnes of malting barley in the three countries and the proposed purchaser, Soufflet, already has 1.5 million tonnes of malting barley. If it succeeds in this takeover it will be the biggest malt processor in Europe and perhaps the world.

I also want to highlight the fact that there is a very strong Guinness link through the Smithwicks brand to this malting barley and Guinness trades on its Irishness. It is essential that Irish malting barley continues to supply Guinness. If this link is broken it could have a knock-on effect for the Guinness operation in Ireland. I sincerely hope this does not happen.

Here we go again with Greencore. It closed the Irish sugar industry and thousands of farmers, employees and excellent plants in Carlow and Mallow were thrown to the wind with no benefit to the Irish consumer. Greencore is nothing but an asset-stripping company. It is like a pack of vultures and it is at it here again. That is why I call on the Minister and his colleagues to refer any proposed purchase of Greencore Malt to the EU competition authorities. The purchase by Soufflet would create a new company that would have too much dominance and may abuse it in due course. It would be the biggest malting processor in Europe if it succeeds.

Will the Minister call in the chief executive of Greencore and demand guarantees on the continued growing of malting barley and the continuation of malting in Ireland if Greencore decides to sell Greencore Malt and it is approved by the EU. I am very concerned about the future of farmers in this regard.

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