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

I will respond to Deputy Kyne's point before dealing with the issue raised by Deputy Ó Cuív. I have information on the associations which own the aforementioned companies which might be of use to the Deputy. Munster Proteins and Waterford Proteins are owned by the ABP Group; Dublin Proteins, which runs two facilities, is owned by the Ronan Group; Slaney Proteins is owned by Slaney Foods International; Western Proteins is owned by Dawn Meats; SRCL is part of the Stericycle Group; and United Fish Industries is a subsidiary of Welcon Invest AS. There is different ownership here. People talk all of the time about some kind of cartel operating in the beef industry but all I can say, based on my own experience, is that there is a lot of competition between the various beef companies. Companies like Dawn Meats, Kepak, ABP and so forth are in intensive competition with each other in terms of the markets they supply. There is also a host of other, smaller companies involved in the industry such as Kildare Chilling, Slaney Meats and so forth. We produce a lot of meat in Ireland, far more than our own market could support. We export huge volumes of meat and companies have been built on the back of those exports. I believe there is competition in the industry, although that might not be a popular thing to say. If there is any evidence to suggest that anything else is occurring in the marketplace, I would like to hear about it and will follow up on it.

I do not think we should put a beef regulator in place, independent of the Government, because that would suggest that there is something seriously wrong here. I am not sure that there is any evidence to support that suggestion. At the moment we have a very successful beef industry in Ireland which we are looking to build on further. If there is any evidence to suggest that there is something fundamentally wrong in terms of the structures or dominance within the market, the Competition Authority can investigate that. Let us not start raising concerns about the industry here without having some evidence to back them up.

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