O’Keeffe hits out at EU sugar reform

THE reform of the European Union sugar regime led to an exchange between World Trade Organisation (WTO) director general Pascal Lamy and former Food Minister Ned O’Keeffe at an OECD globalisation forum in Paris.

Mr Lamy said maintaining an Irish price for sugar at more than two-and-a-half times the world rate was not sustainable. Mr O’Keeffe said low-cost producers are not going to be the answer for high cost agri-production problems in Europe.

“We are high-cost producers and low-cost production coming in here is going to have an effect,” he said, suggesting quotas, labelling and import restrictions to level off with high-cost production. Mr O’Keeffe said Ireland had lost its sugar beet industry to reforms, the first EU country to have done so, in a country that had grown sugar for 100 years.