asked the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries if he will consider the feasibility of his Department's acting as a central buying agency for intervention cattle as is the case for disease eradication programmes, especially in view of the highly unsatisfactory operation of the intervention system from the producers' viewpoint in the past year.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Beef Intervention Arrangements.
129.
The EEC beef intervention arrangements currently in operation enable my Department, as the intervention agency, to purchase only meat from slaughtered cattle.
Could there not be set up machinery under which the Department would buy and pay the intervention price? We know what happened this year—the people who should get it did not get it. The whole point is that the State should be the agency.
That would call for adjustment of the Commission's regulations and I am sure the Minister is alive to all such suggestions.
How can we compromise on this one? There is a compromise in Britain which is contrary to the regulations. That has been the greatest scandal of all time.
This is not related to the statements in the previous question.
Question No. 130.
The position is that the regulations make it mandatory on us, as the intervention agency, to purchase meat from slaughtered cattle only, so we are committed to purchasing only from the factories. Possibly there could be some justification for changing them.