Susan O'Keeffe (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Once again, I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to the House to talk about horsemeat. The issue has been with us for some weeks and we have not seen the Minister. I appreciate that he is busy and that, as Senator Pat O'Neill has pointed out, the CAP negotiations are exceptionally important. However, any number of questions arise from the horsemeat issue. A couple of weeks ago there was a public dispute in the newspapers between the Secretary of State for Agriculture in the United Kingdom and the Minister as to who had said what to whom about how the testing had commenced in Ireland and whether the horsemeat had been found as a consequence of a tip-off or as an intuitive response to the enormous slaughter of animals for meat. There are also questions to be raised about whether the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has enough capacity and is conducting enough tests or whether the testing is at the minimum or maximum level. Furthermore, I would like to know whether SIlvercrest is being sold on or sold off and whether some of the employees still being paid by the company were shipped in from Northern Ireland or eastern Europe.

Last but not least, the "Spotlight" programme last night suggested that the relevant Department in the UK had written to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in regard to a tip-off it received about a company in Offaly last year. The Department of the Agriculture, Food and the Marine seems not to know about that tip-off and said that it had not received anything, yet the Department in the UK said very specifically that it had sent that information to the officials here. There are any number of questions about this issue, not least about the operation of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine, but also in regard to the horsemeat. I urge the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to come into the House and offer us reassurance. As Senator O'Neill and I, among others, have said on previous occasions, this is an extraordinarily important industry in Ireland and the only way in which it can continue to be important and to build up what is there is if it is clean and if it offers the best meat and the best products not only here but across Europe. The only way to do that is to clean it up. I would like some reassurance from the Minister and form his officials that such a clean up is in operation, that the people who have been defrauding the system will be arrested and will stand trial and at the very least that the horsemeat saga would come to some conclusion because at this point it is doing some damage to our industry, damage we can ill afford.