There is no simplistic answer to significant increases in beef prices in the immediate term, An Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Simon Coveney has said.

“I just don’t buy into this thing that we have this cartel between factories. We’ve asked the competition authority to look into this on multiple occasions and they have.

“There are certain beliefs that I think just aren’t backed up when you look at the stats, but that doesn’t mean we can’t improve the deal with farmers. We can,” he told the Irish Guild of Agricultural Journalists Michael Dillon Memorial Lecture on Friday night.

“I remember when I was in the Department of Agriculture. At that point in time we were trying to persuade farm organisations to set up producer organisations in the beef industry. It didn’t happen and it should have and it needs to happen now.

“We also are committed effectively to introducing a beef ombudsman, a new food regulator, which I think will be helpful in terms of providing more transparency on the supply chain around pricing,” he said.

Exports

An Tánaiste reminded everyone that nine out of every 10 animals get consumed outside of Ireland by consumers who buy from retailers outside of Ireland, a huge number of them in the UK.

“So the idea that we can just do something on our own here to demand higher prices simply means that those retailers will buy from somebody else.

“So we need to do this at an EU level and we need to do it through a collective approach at a beef forum that treats each segment of that supply chain fairly. At the moment in my view farmers are not getting the deal that they deserve to get,” he said.

Losing money

He said if the price of beef means that the producers along the farming supply chain are all losing money and relying on CAP money to make any profit, “then you’ve got a big problem”.

“If you’ve got an average income from beef farming of about €15,000 a year, it’s not sustainable. I think there’s been a frustration with beef prices that has driven that splintering within farm organisations where some people want to be more aggressive. Some people want to negotiate, some people want to protest, some people want to picket. That has in my view been very difficult to manage, within farm organisations and outside of them,” he said.

Brexit collision course

Coveney also issued a warning on Brexit.

“I’m really worried about where Brexit is going and I don’t mind saying that publicly. I think we are on a collision course with Britain as an EU. I don’t know whether that is a deliberate strategy; it probably has to be on the British side,” he said.

Irish politics is going to be dominated by Brexit for the next 12 months whether we like it or not, he said.

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