Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)

The Minister mentioned in a previous reply that quite a small amount of beef from Brazil comes into Ireland and that there is no evidence of this issue. Is the evidence being looked for? What kind of investigations are we carrying out into that, from an Irish and European perspective? Similarly, we have a large amount of poultry coming in under the Mercosur deal. I think it is 180,000 tonnes. We need to be vigilant in respect of that. We have a large poultry industry in Ireland and we eat a lot of poultry so we need to ensure it is of the highest quality.

I will go back to the issue raised earlier about feedstuffs. A lot of feedstuffs are imported into this country from Latin America and other tropical climates. That is displacing Irish grain and feed and if we are to be authentic about the quality of our food, we need to ensure that the authenticity can be stood over. For example, people were before the committee recently to speak about growing grain and, in some cases, the only thing that is Irish in Irish whiskey is the water. That is a very bad situation. We need to be authentic about the products we produce and to do so not only from the point of view that they are what they say on the label, but also that we can guarantee their quality. The only way we can guarantee their quality is if we produce the ingredients as well as the finished product here.

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