Vol. 446 No. 7
141 Mr. O'Malley asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry the reason a query from the Department of Industry and Commerce in November 1989, in relation to whether intervention stocks has been used to fulfil contracts for the supply of beef to Iraq was not replied to. [2942/94]
It is totally incorrect to imply that my Department did not reply to the query of the Minister for Industry and Commerce in November 1989 in relation to whether intervention stocks had been used to fulfil contract for the supply of beef to Iraq. I referred to this matter in detail in my address to the Dáil during the debate on the tribunal report on 3 September 1994.
The request for such information was made orally to my Department in November 1989. The response was not to refuse to provide the information but was rather to say that it would take a very substantial amount of time and resources to meet the request. The reason for that response is that, while the information was available in my Department, it was not readily so. Sales from intervention are not conditional upon the beef being dispatched to any particular destination, except in a minority of cases. Moreover, there was no regulatory reason, EU or Departmental, for statistics on intervention sales to be categorised by reference to export destination.
The Department of Industry and Commerce did not follow up on my Department's response with a request to provide the information over time. My Department's initial assessment of the time it would take to provide the information was subsequently well borne out when some 40 additional temporary staff had to be employed over several months to meet a similar request from the Beef Tribunal.
