Over the last few weeks, during the tendentious dispute between farmers and meat factories I twice heard senior political figures (Tánaiste Simon Coveney, Minister for Foreign Affairs and former Minister for Agriculture, and Martin Heydon, the sure-footed chair of the Fine Gael party) refer to their openness to the idea of a regulator being appointed for the Irish meat-processing sector.

So why should a regulator for this particular industry be considered? A few factors are clear. The first is that there is a high level of distrust, to put it mildly, between the meat industry and its farmer suppliers.

Part of that is undoubtedly due to the lack of transparency surrounding several aspects of the business. The existence of the unlimited private company structure allows almost complete secrecy surrounding the profits earned by the main players in the sector. There are many other companies in Ireland operating within this legal framework. Where these companies are in competition with individuals and other companies across the world, then the reaction is usually that they have, as an Irish company, taken on the world and won. The Naughten family’s Glen Dimplex is one such example, but there are several others. This does not apply in the beef-processing sector.

In many cases, these firms have been developed and driven by individuals of truly exceptional capacity in terms of organisational and marketing ability, as well as dedication to hard work. But the industry has a captive supply, in that beef farmers cannot sell their finished cattle to anyone else. There is no real live export trade off the island of Ireland and even the market for carcases within the EU, and especially in Britain, is weighed against Irish producers by the labelling regulations – which developed because of the BSE crisis 20 years ago.

We have a precedent in this country of a regulator being appointed to supervise industries with this type of customer or supplier structure.

On 29 May, at the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission suggested that a regulator might be appointed for the beef-processing sector. So what might a regulator’s term of reference look like? These are going to take some teasing out, but clearly the regulator should have access to full profit and loss figures. Also, it is clear that ownership and access to offal rendering facilities would have to be considered.

Details around the quoting of prices would clearly require a more detailed examination, but the normal near-unanimity of quotes to producers suggests that further probing is required. It seems extraordinary that firms with widely different market outlets would be so united on the prices paid to farmers. Now that a beef task force has been set up, it’s the ideal time to put a structure in place that will meet the needs of the industry while also meeting farmers’ visible concerns.

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Should there be a meat regulator?

A few factors are clear. The first is that there is a high level of distrust, to put it at its mildest, between the broad meat industry and its farmer suppliers.