Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)

Regarding the night of 20 February 2006, I understand the difficulty for the current Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in needing to account for a decision taken in 2006 at a meeting at which he was not present. Therefore, he is reliant on the officials. Ideally, the then Minister should be in the Chamber so that we could have a full and frank account of what occurred at the meeting.

Why did the Government shift its position? While we were considering the matter from the perspective of Mallow and the protection of jobs and a viable national industry, there were grounds for hope because of the blocking minority. The Tánaiste stated it was a group of 14 member states. I understood that, under the old regime, a blocking minority consisted of nine member states. Why did the Government shift its position from a blocking minority of nine to acceding to the cessation of trading as an industry? Something must have happened. Perhaps a vested interest intervened because it wanted to take the compensation. This could have been a minority group of larger growers, the Government or even Greencore, which might have decided that it was going to get out of the industry and applied political pressure on the Government to that effect.

The question of the golden share and related responsibilities comes into play in this respect. I understand that the 1990 legislation makes provision for the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to acquire a special share in the holding company and to exercise the rights attached to that share. However, the Minister stated that he had no rights in the context of the share. Forgive me, as I am not a lawyer or a solicitor, but if the Minister is telling the House that we had a golden share with no rights attached to it in terms of the performance of the company, why did we have a golden share in the first instance? What was its purpose if we could not influence internal Greencore decisions on the compensation package and the industry's future in Ireland?

I will tell the House the reason. The Government did not care about the future of the industry. Vested interests had sufficient influence in Government circles to tell it to adopt the new negotiating position of taking the money and running. If we had the support of the other member states, we could have retained a blocking minority. If the contrary is the case, then the Minister should tell us.

I refer to the stand-alone paragraph which stated that we had a proficient factory - this is obviously a reference to the Mallow factory in point 30 as the Minister has stated. Has the Minister been in contact with the Commission regarding that specific point of the report? What has been the Commission's response to the Minister on that matter and on the report in general? Deputy Jack Wall has already stated that the decision had not been justified on the risk of lower prices reducing the supply of sugar beet to an uneconomic level. We did not really know what the true market would be, post-restructuring. My information in 2005 was that Greencore was going to proceed with production and move into a post-quota scenario and then see how the market would pan out. This was the impression given to me by senior people within Greencore at the time. In other words, even if the quota regime was not in place, the industry might survive for a year or two in a new market scenario. If after that time the industry did not survive, there might be a possibility it could diversify into ethanol and other such products. I ask for the Minister's view at this stage. Will I be allowed make another contribution later?

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