Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Martin Ferris will know, there are a number of interest groups in the State which would like to see the return of a sugar refining industry, not least farmers who want to grow sugar beet both as a valuable cash crop and as a valuable break crop in arable farming.

That is even more important, given the potential for new greening measures in the Common Agricultural Policy reform process. I am very supportive of these efforts, but two things need to happen before we see a new beet factory built in Ireland. First, Ireland needs to have a quota to produce sugar or else we need to have no quotas in the European Union.

There is a European sugar quota regime in place. As Ireland was compensated to get out of sugar production a few years ago, under EU rules, we cannot produce sugar, even if we wanted to and had the capacity to do so. That sugar regime is due to end in 2015. My position is that we should do away with sugar quotas post-2015 and that countries such as Ireland should be able to produce sugar if they can put together a business case to do so and get investors to support it. That is unlikely, however, because there are strong vested interests who want to see a sugar quota regime continue in place. Sugar quotas will end at some stage between 2015 and 2020. I have repeatedly asked that if the sugar quota regime continues after 2015, countries such as Ireland which have been compensated to get out of sugar production but only until 2015 should be given a limited sugar quota for their own domestic use in order that they can get back into producing sugar.

The second point is that there needs to be a business case made, backed by investors and, presumably, banks, to make it possible to spend the €200 million required to build a sugar factory and an ethanol plant. Two very credible feasibility studies were published last summer and my job is to meet the first challenge to try to get a quota or secure the absence of quota to allow these proposals to press ahead if it is economically viable to do so. That will be determined by the price of sugar internationally.

See this speech in context