Dáil debates

Wednesday, 27 November 2019

Saincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Debate

Beef Industry

2:20 pm

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State, Deputy Doyle, is fully aware that one organisation is holding the whole industry to ransom by its failure to lift injunctions against two farmers, one an elected councillor, and this has resulted in huge frustration and anger right across the farming community. Sadly, this has boiled over into the current blockade of the streets of Dublin.

On 15 October last, I told the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine that it was unacceptable that Larry Goodman's ABP Food Group has effectively stalled the beef task force through its failure to lift legal threats. That is why farmers around the country are so frustrated and why they are on the streets of our capital today. While I accept there is no silver bullet to the issues in the beef sector, four measures that I put forward in the Private Members' motion on 26 September last, and unanimously accepted by Dáil Éireann, would fundamentally shift power away from meat processors and the supermarkets to the Irish suckler beef farmers. While this will not solve the problem overnight, if such effective steps had been taken five years ago, we would be in a very different situation today.

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