Brendan Ryan (Labour)

Everybody with a heart and a sense of compassion and justice will be concerned about the workforce of the Carlow sugar factory, which is located only 12 miles from my home town. It was recognised as a serious, secure but difficult employment for full-time workers and people travelled in significant numbers during my childhood from Athy to work in the factory. The sugar company was a considerable achievement on the part of the State and it will forever be associated in my age group's mind with Lieutenant General M. J. Costello, a classic example of a public sector entrepreneur who was never short of ideas.

However, it was a different world then and the motion and the amendment raise an unanswered question. Let us consider what has happened in Ireland over the past 40 years. Significant textile, footwear and car assembly industries have almost disappeared and, while we still have a major information and communications industry, sections of it that were located in the State ten or 15 years ago are gone. When Seagate in Clonmel closed, I suggested, with my tongue firmly in my cheek, that the State should buy its surplus product and sell it at a subsidised price in the developing world. While I was joking, there were parallels between that and the defence of agriculture that I often heard in the House at that time, which comprised the belief that a tide could be held back.

The debate should address the tide that is impossible to hold back. The two largest political parties in the State have served farmers poorly by pretending to them that if we keep our eyes shut and our hands over our ears and avoid everything, like the famous ostrich burying its head, nothing will happen. If we say "Boo" in the dark, it will all go away. However, that is not the case and the job is to manage the transition.

I am not impressed by what I have seen so far. A serious strategy involving Government, Greencore and other agencies to manage the transition has not been devised. Greencore has made a brutal decision in the interest of no more than short-term viability. The conditions that have forced the company to consolidate at one site will lead in the medium term to a decision that the indigenous sugar industry is non-viable. For example, I do not know whether specific speciality brands of sugar could be produced only from domestic beet. It is a great tragedy because the sugar company is extraordinary and unique in terms of its capacity for technological and product innovation and its capacity to extend itself.

However, its looks increasingly likely we will not have to deal with a determination to say, "No, it will not happen", but to manage a process, the outcome of which none of us can forecast. I do not know whether we can put together a beet-based sugar processing industry which can compete with international imports. I agree with Senator Callanan on this matter. I received a firm reprimand from a senior representative of a Third World country. One of our jobs is to ensure that wherever we have free trade — and we should have it — those who work to produce should operate according to standards that are decent in their own country. I do not want to tell people they must be paid as well in Brazil as here in Ireland. However, by the standards of their country they ought to have the freedom to join a trade union. If we are endeavouring to import from countries where those rights do not exist, it is our Government's job to negotiate a deal though the World Trade Organisation. However, I do not believe there is a long-term future for a viable, commercially independent sugar beet industry even if that were done.

I attended a World Trade Organisation parliamentary assembly in Geneva two years ago. Delegates were talking about the changes that had been agreed in the area of sugar production. It was a slight relief for Irish parliamentarians because the reiterated complaint of the parliamentary representatives of the developing world was that, on the issue of agriculture, Ireland and France were holding back progress within the EU. In their view, Ireland's rhetoric and acknowledged generosity were tainted by the Irish determination not to allow them to properly and fairly use their comparative advantage in many areas of agriculture to access one of the two biggest markets in the world. It was not just an Ireland and EU issue; it was a complaint against the EU and the United States. These Third World countries were aware France and Ireland were the culprits. Many of them could say that if France did not have Ireland, it would not in many cases be able to stop it on its own. They saw it as a political combination of a big and a small country.

It is a great pity that we only discuss issues such as this in the middle of a crisis. As such, it is very easy to say we should act like King Canute and stand in front and say, "Go back". This will not go back. We are misleading both the workforce in the two factories and those who produce sugar beet if we tell them it will. We can only manage the change; we most assuredly cannot stop it. It is high time we began to talk about a future for all agriculture and food industry based on the reality that within five, ten or 20 years it will be based on a free trade arrangement where the only boundaries to trade will be issues of quality in terms of human safety. To pretend otherwise to farmers or people who work in the food industry is to mislead them.