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

I thank the Deputy for asking this question and I am very pleased to have an opportunity to outline what I think beef producers in Ireland can do. As the Deputy knows, as Minister I cannot get involved in influencing price directly. I have received two letters from the Competition Authority, which made very clear how far the beef forum can go on a series of issues and where it cannot go in regard to trying to influence price directly. We can, however, try to restructure the beef industry in a manner that ensures farmers increase their negotiating capacity in areas such as price, specifications, conditions in the market and the information flow between processor and farmer on what the market needs, when it needs it and so on.

Producer organisations in other parts of Europe represent large numbers of farmers collectively and negotiate on their behalf, which leads to better outcomes than we have here. One of the major weaknesses in the beef sector, which is not found in the dairy sector, is that farmers, in effect, are price takers when they bring cattle to factories. No negotiation takes place. Farming organisations need to apply a lot of pressure through protest and so on if they are unhappy with prices.

There is a better way of doing things, whereby 1,000, 2,000 or 3,000 farmers who are producing beef would be represented by a farmer-owned producer organisation which would negotiate on their behalf. It would be responsible for communication between the marketplace, represented by processors or retailers, and the primary producers, that is, farmers, to make sure they were getting the fairest deal possible from the marketplace. That would fundamentally change the balance of negotiating power between farmers and factories, something which is currently being expressed through protest.

There has been a public consultation process on how the different stakeholders would like to see producer organisations working. It is also in the interests of processors, because they will have a much more professional negotiating system with primary producers in terms of ensuring quality, specifications and all the other elements. We intend to push on with this and have approval from all of the stakeholders in the beef forum to do that.

See this speech in context