Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 31 March 2022
114. Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his proposals to ensure the unfair trading practices enforcement authority will have the necessary powers to improve and secure farmers' position in the market chain. [16812/22]
View answerTá fáilte roimh an Aire. I have long believed a strong regulator is required for the food sector, for the meat industry in particular. The Minister has advocated for a food ombudsman in the past. Recently, he announced instead he would establish an office for fairness and transparency. I ask him to inform the Dáil what the distinction is between the two. What powers does he envisage the new enforcement authority will have?
As the Deputy may be aware, the programme for Government commits to the establishment of a new authority to enforce the unfair trading practices directive. It will have a specific role in analysing and reporting on price and market data in Ireland. In April 2021, I signed the statutory instrument transposing the unfair trading practices directive directly into Irish law before the 1 May 2021 deadline for transposition. At that time, I also established the unfair trading practices directive enforcement authority in my Department on an interim basis pending the finalisation of the primary legislation for the new office.
I am pleased to inform the Deputy that on 22 March, the priority drafting of the general scheme of the agricultural and food supply chain Bill 2022 was approved by Government at Cabinet. The Bill will establish a new independent statutory authority to be known as the office for fairness and transparency in the agrifood supply chain. The general scheme has been published on my Department's website and it provides for a range of functions and powers. The objective of the new office will be to promote the principles of fairness and transparency in the food supply chain, and it will principally do this in two ways. First, it will perform a price and market analysis and reporting function. The new office will endeavour to bring greater transparency to the food supply chain by carrying out market analysis on publicly available agricultural and food supply chain data and by producing reports that will be made available to stakeholders and the wider public. Second, the new office will be responsible for ensuring fairness is observed in the agricultural and food supply chain by becoming the State’s designated enforcement authority for enforcing the rules on unfair trading practices in business-to-business relationships in the food supply chain. Once established, the new office will take over the enforcement functions of the interim enforcement authority currently established in my Department.
With regard to the necessary powers to improve and secure farmers’ position in the market chain, the general scheme of the Bill as approved by Government provides the necessary principles and policies to achieve the programme for Government’s objective of fairness, equity and transparency in the food chain. The next stage is the drafting of the detail of the Bill, which I am hoping will be finalised shortly. In the interim, I assure the Deputy that the interim enforcement authority has been assigned all the necessary legal powers to investigate complaints from suppliers of agricultural and food products and to carry out investigations on its own initiative.
I hope the Minister will accept that, to date, his response to this matter has been minimal. If he does not accept that, I would be apprehensive about the authority that is coming down the line. I want the new authority to work. I want it to have powers of enforcement that go beyond the current section within the Department which, being frank, has received no complaints since it was established. That establishment happened on the basis of a statutory instrument that transposed the European directive verbatim without any additional roles or acts by processors or retailers being made illegal. The Minister said he plans to move to the next stage shortly. What does "shortly" mean? Can we expect publication within the next fortnight, for example? How willing is the Minister to engage with the Opposition and farm organisations to ensure the new authority has the teeth the section in the Department does not?
I do not accept at all that my position has been minimal. This is a landmark move and landmark legislation establishing this office. It is something to which I was committed throughout my time in opposition and I ensured it was included in the programme for Government. I outlined to the public at the most recent general election my commitment to deliver this if I got into government. It was not a commitment in Sinn Féin's manifesto at that election. In some of its annual submissions, Sinn Féin has supported it, and in others, it has not.
I welcome the Deputy's support for this measure and I agree it is important this office has teeth and is effective. That is why I have engaged very broadly with all stakeholders up to this point and conducted a very significant public consultation so everybody could feed into it, including the Deputy himself as an Opposition spokesperson, and all farmers, primary producers and stakeholders in the agrifood sector. It is important we step this out. The final drafting is taking place and I hope to bring the Bill to the Dáil as soon as possible following that. The team is working on it at the moment and a lot of work is already going into it. We will proceed with establishing the office and recruiting staff and I hope to have it up and running and effective by the end of this year.
The difficulty is the Minister said the exact same thing about the timeframe this time last year. I followed the unfair trading practices regulation at an EU level throughout the entire process. I was a shadow rapporteur on the file and was part of the negotiations. I was disappointed with the final outcome because I feared the directive was far too minimal and member states would transpose it in a minimal fashion. To this point, that is what has happened. It has been transposed through a statutory instrument without any additional measures being included.
I wish the Minister well and I hope this new authority has the teeth that will allow farmers and consumers to be treated fairly within the food chain because, currently, they are not. Meat processors and retailers are acting in a cartel-like fashion where they are exploiting the people producing the food and the end purchasers of the food. Will the new office have the powers of a corporate enforcement office? Will it be able to examine every facet of the market chain to ensure undue profits are not being gleaned on the backs of hard-working farmers or hard-pressed consumers?
The key objective here is to have an independent office that is statutory and has the credibility and independence to oversee what is going on in the marketplace and influence it in a way that ensures it is as fair as possible. The ultimate objective is to ensure fairness and fair play for primary producers, farm families and smaller and more vulnerable suppliers in the food supply chain. That is the objective. The office will oversee the unfair trading practices directive but a key role will also be assessing what is happening in the marketplace, shining a light on it and influencing it in a such way that we ensure respect throughout the food supply chain for all actors, but particularly for those who are most vulnerable, namely, the primary producer, the farm family, fishers and smaller producers. That is the objective here. As I said, the plan is to have the office up and running and operational by the end of this year. We are now proceeding with legislation to bring that through as quickly as we can.
