Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)

I express solidarity with the workers and growers in north Cork, the area with which I am most familiar, who fought tooth and nail and through thick and thin to try to keep the sugar factory in Mallow operational. They were given a clear indication that the factory had a viable future if efficiencies and changed work practices were introduced. Having agreed to the changes, the workforce was sold out by the Fianna Fáil Government.

The Tánaiste, who was the Minister for Agriculture and Food at the time, made the following statement to the House this morning:

Second, as then Minister for Agriculture and Food, I opposed the Commission's proposals, as the Members will be aware and led the group of 14 in its opposition to that reform. I led that opposition with a number of other colleagues in the European Union.

There is a disparity between this statement and the minutes of the meeting of the Council of Ministers of 20 February 2006, which state:

The Council successfully adopted by qualified majority the three Regulations on the reform of the sugar sector as set out in documents 5588/06, 5589/06, 5590/06. The Greek, Polish, and Latvian delegations voted against.

If the Greek, Polish and Latvian delegations voted against the so-called reforms, only the Tánaiste, who was a party to the discussions in the Council of Ministers and claims she opposed the proposals, is in a position to describe what occurred at the meeting. Why is she not present to clarify the matter? She owes an explanation to the growers of north Cork and elsewhere in the country as well as the workers who lost their jobs as a result of the decision taken by the Council of Ministers.

I remind the Minister that some of the same workers had to wait for more than 12 months for redundancy payments. I was a councillor at the time and had to seek supplementary welfare payments on the behalf of workers at the Mallow plant, pending the outcome of negotiations with Greencore, a company that had received millions of euro from the compensation fund. That story was never told because we were in the midst of the Celtic tiger and the Government side did not want to hear it.

The bottom line is that the former Minister shifted her position from one in which she was in a blocking minority with other countries to one in which she accepted the compensation package. She owes it to people in north Cork, all those who grew beet and everyone else who was affected by the decision to explain the reason she shifted her position. That is the least the House deserves in terms of the history of this episode.

In 2005, I stated that if Ireland was to stop producing sugar, the perfect place to start producing ethanol was either Carlow or Mallow. Ethanol is now being imported into Whitegate. The Labour Party tabled an amendment on the biofuels Bill providing for the imposition of a tariff on ethanol imports to stimulate local production. Despite the presence of the Green Party in government, this measure has not been taken. If we are not to produce sugar again, we should at least produce ethanol locally to meet the requirements of the biofuel obligation. The Government must explain the position it took on this matter.

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