Vol. 555 No. 2
158 Mr. Neville asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food the political and diplomatic initiatives he is taking to get beef shipments moving to all traditional Irish markets in Egypt, Saudia Arabia, the Gulf states, South Africa, Indonesia and the Philippines. [18008/02]
It is my policy and that of the Government to ensure that Irish beef exporters have unrestricted access to markets worldwide and intensive efforts at diplomatic, political and technical levels have been made over the past two years by my Department, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Bord Bia to bring about this objective.
It has been my experience that where restrictions on Irish exports of beef exist because of concerns about BSE, the most effective way of addressing this has been to underpin political and diplomatic pressure by demonstrating in practice to the relevant experts from those countries the controls throughout the sector. This approach was adopted successfully in relation to Russia and Egypt and is being continued with regard to a number of other potentially significant markets.
My Department, with the assistance of Bord Bia, last week hosted a conference in Dublin on food safety and consumer protection in the beef sector aimed specifically at important markets in the Gulf region. The conference, which was attended by veterinary and food safety experts from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, afforded the visiting experts from those Gulf states the opportunity to assess the level and effectiveness of Ireland's BSE controls and I am pleased to say that reaction to the conference has been very positive. We are also in ongoing contact with the South African, Philippine and Indonesian authorities at technical and diplomatic level with a view to having those markets reopened to Irish beef.
