Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 9 Oct 2002

Vol. 554 No. 5

Written Answers. - Price Transparency.

Jack Wall

Ceist:

239 Mr. Wall asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food the proposals his Department has on the representations he made to the EU in regard to the implementation of a beef price transparency mechanism based on the US model; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15446/02]

Minister for Agriculture and Food (Mr. Walsh):

Since February 2000, my Department has published on a weekly basis, prices paid by individual named meat plants for all grades and categories of cattle. This initiative introduced a new degree of price transparency into the market which has been extremely useful to farmers in their decisions relating to the disposal of their stock.

As far as market price transparency is concerned, my Department endeavoured over a lengthy period in 1999 and 2000, through the monitoring committee on the report of the beef task force, to secure the agreement of all of the interests in the beef industry to a voluntary price transparency mechanism. While substantial progress was made on a price transparency model, the industry was unable to reach agreement on the issue of independent verification.

The US price transparency model requires detailed mandatory price reporting and would impose a heavy administrative burden both on the industry and on the public authorities responsible for administering the system. The introduction of a similar system in Ireland would be quite costly either on the industry or the State, depending on how it was financed. For these reasons, I continue to support the introduction of the more simplified price transparency model which was discussed in the beef task force monitoring committee. I have not made any representations to the EU on the implementation of a US beef price transparency mechanism.