I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise this matter since the Government refused to make time available earlier today. We would have had the best part of an hour or more to discuss these issues if the Government had taken a more reasonable view earlier. The Council of Ministers in Brussels last night decided that from 1 July next no beef carcase weighing over 380 kilos will qualify for intervention and that with effect from 1 July next that limit will be reduced to 340 kilos. That decision will be disastrous for Irish cattle producers and meat processors and the people who work in our meat factories. It is a humiliating defeat for the Minister for Agriculture and a further demonstration of his utter ineptitude as a negotiator. In the past the Minister repeatedly assured farm organisations and the meat processors that such limits would never be applied. When he lost that argument in Brussels he tried to pretend that the effect would not be so bad, that he would secure a higher limit and would never allow the weight limit to be reduced to 340 kilos. We know the Minister's tactics. He is using them again today. He is a nice fellow, he smiles a lot and tells us not to worry, that it will be sorted out on the day. We have seen that as a direct result of the decision. The Minister assured us that the limit would never be reduced to 340 kilos but he has again failed; from 1 July next no carcase weighing over 340 kilos will be put into intervention, something the Minister told us would never happen.
The Minister now tells us he believes that the decision by the Council of Ministers may be illegal and that he will take it to the European Court of Justice. I wish the Minister well but he should realise that he will lose either way. If on the one hand the court finds that the Council decision is illegal the Minister stands condemned for having failed to convince his colleagues. If, on the other the court upholds the Council decision the Minister will end up with a double dose of egg on his face. Either way he stands condemned for ineptitude as a negotiator. This decision will create grave difficulties for producers and meat processors this year and more serious problems after July next year.
The Minister should not try to tell me he is encouraged by the fact that the Irish meat processors did not make any bid for a recent tender for intervention. That came about as a result of a combination of circumstances for which the Minister cannot claim credit and which would have been in place with or without the 380 kilo weight limit. To take the matter to court which the Minister has talked about doing — I do not know if he has decided this yet — will not give consolation to farmers, the meat processing industry or workers in that industry in the immediate future. It is impossible to guess how long such court proceedings will take and, in the meantime, the pain will be acute. The Minister may have snookered himself by making this threat. If he now found some other way round the problems of farmers and meat processors there is little chance that he will get a hearing from the Commission or the Council if he has already threatened to take the matter to court.
We should now set about finding alternative ways of reducing pressure on the intervention system, there are plenty of them, and the Minister's advisers will tell him this. We should aim to have a comprehensive, well articulated approach by the end of this year so that we can return to the charge well before the second phase of this disastrous decision comes into effect in July of next year.
It seems that the Minister has so completely sold the pass at this stage that the whole situation may well be irretrievable. He has shown such ineptitude I have serious doubts that even with the best brief in the world he will make much progress on this issue. We owe it to our farmers, to our workers in the meat processing industry and to the industry itself at least to try.
