Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)

I join others in welcoming the Minister of State. There are a number of steps that must be taken as a matter of urgency. They merit repeating, although a number of them have been in the media over the past few days. As a result of the grave losses that processors and producers have had to accept, a compensation package must be put in place. That matter is under negotiation but there is a clear need for it.

It would be welcome to get as much funding as possible from the EU in this respect. I note that the result of the Lisbon treaty referendum is not helping in this regard. There must be a compensation package — irrespective of whether it comes from the EU — and the economy must take this hit if necessary. The people involved could not continue otherwise. A point has emerged today of banks facilitating both processors and producers over the next week or so, and this should come about.

It is crucial to get processing up and running immediately. I and others welcome the Minister of State's announcement on organic pig production and the processing thereof. I hope that within hours we can have a similar announcement for the entire sector. We must get back to normal very quickly.

The incident is an indictment of our licensing and inspection of food processing facilities. We must examine this inspection system of food facilities. It is horrendous this processing system was allowed to operate under the radar and was described in memoranda as a low-level risk. There had been no scrutiny of the facility in 2008. Immediate action is required.

This was a systems failure and there is no point in saying otherwise. We did not have a better system of inspection or detection and more consistent monitoring. We have discussed this matter in the House before as it is in stark contrast with the kind of red tape and almost daily inspections that ordinary producers go through. It was an horrendous failure in this respect. Ordinary farmers experience red tape to a prohibitive degree and they must feel so frustrated, angry and that they are the innocent victims of something over which they had no control.

The question of traceability arises and it is great that there is such a high level of traceability in the beef sector. I am interested in the response of the Minister of State on this matter, as we will need a specific and almost renewed charter of traceability criteria, rules and regulations. There must be a re-evaluation of what we are doing about traceability. We will need aggressive marketing of Irish products. We know our Irish food is the best but we got horrendous publicity yesterday on Sky News, whose reporting was very bleak. I hope that can change but we will need an aggressive marketing programme.

I know the country is in bad shape but we must compensate farmers and processors to help them cope with the horrendous losses they have experienced. Similarly, we must spend some money on an initial tranche of advertising to cope with the current difficulty. That would be money well spent. We spoke about spending money in foreign countries on a different matter in previous weeks. I am not talking about that but we need effective marketing of our produce abroad over the next couple of months to get over this difficulty. The problem will be surmounted at that level.

These are the only suggestions I can make in the confines of my time. I will promptly hand over to my colleague, Senator McFadden.