Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairman. I welcome the Minister to the House. I will speak predominantly about beef. Nobody doubts the Minister's commitment to the job at hand and I am sure he is doing all he can. However, I wish to make a few suggestions about a number of things we should be doing. As the biggest surplus producer of beef in the EU we should be leading the way rather than following a Europe generated consensus, albeit that we might be feeding into. The Minister mentioned that the Russian market is closed. We need to be much more proactive in the context of markets and leading the way. Instead of France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Italy who have had their own bilaterals in terms of the supply of offal and live cattle, subject to quarantine and a very specific technical system which has been agreed between the Netherlands and Russia on traceability and access to their computers, they are subject to an inspection in the next couple of weeks and expect to be shipping by the end of December. There is a rumour that France is already shipping but I cannot verify that. Obviously a huge amount of produce is being smuggled in. The Russian shelves are still packed with European product.