Vol. 513 No. 2
71 Mr. Yates asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development if he will establish, through his Department or an independent agency, a transparent mechanism in order that export refunds payable through his Department will be fully conveyed to beef processors; and the pricing mechanism he is proposing to ensure transparency of pricing to beef producers by meat factories. [2111/00]
Export refunds are paid to beef exporters in order to enable them to export beef to lower priced third country markets. It is intended that the price transparency mechanism based on independent verification which the Government announced last week will incorporate both the export refund and the market price obtained by Irish exporters on third country markets. In essence, the objective of this mechanism is to track the market returns, including export refunds, available to Irish exporters in order to enable an assessment to be made of the extent to which prices paid to producers satisfactorily reflect trends on these markets.
The price transparency mechanism will be implemented through the monitoring committee on the beef task force which I established last year to progress implementation of a number of recommendations of the report of the task force.
