Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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839. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the outcome of the most recent meeting of the beef forum and the issues discussed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27464/16]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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On the 22nd of July I chaired the eighth meeting of the Beef Forum.  I view the Forum as an important vehicle for positive engagement between stakeholders in the sector.

At the last meeting stakeholders  focused on the current state of the beef sector and the outlook for the remainder of 2016, as well as the potential implications of UK referendum to exit the EU.

There was also a significant discussion on proposals from the European Commission on climate change and the potential implications for agriculture and presentations were made on the updating of ICBF's genomic evaluations and the national Clean Livestock Policy.

I also announced my intention to establish a meat implementation group, made up of sectoral stakeholders, to focus on the meat sector recommendations in Food Wise 2025, and I intend to appoint a chairman for such a group in the coming weeks.

The Roundtable also received updates on a number of other key initiatives since its last meeting:

The roll out of the €300,000 DAFM Mart Modernisation Scheme for the funding of new ringside display screens in order to assist farmers when purchasing animals at livestock marts. The Department launched the scheme in May and almost 70 marts have applied for the grant to upgrade screens in their rings.

The implementation of the BDGP, with almost 20,000 participants now having completed their training under the scheme. So far the scheme has paid out almost €40 million euro to over 22,000 herd owners. I also took the opportunity to remind the participants in the BDGP of the requirement to complete the Carbon Navigator tool by the 31 October deadline.

The recent announcement by the US authorities to extend their approval for Irish beef to include manufacturing beef, and the work underway to extend market access to a range of other third countries.

On the live exports side, the opening of the Turkish and re-opening of the Egyptian markets to live exports provides another outlet for exporters in this sector.

As always every presentation from the Forum was made available on my Department's website the same day in keeping with our commitment for an open and transparent discussion on the relevant issues for the sector.