Blame game offers few sweeteners to workers
FOUR years ago when the Irish sugar beet industry was wiped out at the stroke of a pen, a blame game erupted as to who was responsible for putting 3,700 growers and hundreds of Greencore employees out of work and ending what could now have been a highly profitable industry.
At the height of the Celtic Tiger and amid the Government’s preoccupation with the ‘high-end’ industries, agriculture simply did not fit into its plans. Just four months before the curtain came down on the beet industry, then Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin admitted the only nod to the country’s traditional industry was a leaning towards “information technology, bio-technology and agri-foods”.
Nonetheless, when the end came — and again now — Mary Coughlan blamed the EU for the collapse of the sugar industry saying Europe had ordered a restructuring of the regime and she had been a staunch opponent of such a move.
Speaking in March 2006, opposition TD Simon Coveney said it was not sufficient to blame the decision solely on EU reforms or on Greencore, the multinational which made a fortune from sugar since the industry was privatised in 1991.
“The Minister for Agriculture has played a disgraceful part in allowing this to materialise,” the Fine Gael TD insisted in March 2006. Fast forward four years and the same accusation is made now by a number of beet growers, not least one who would appear highly qualified to comment.
Alan Navratil’s father, a chemical and mechanical engineer came to Ireland from Czechoslovakia in 1926 and helped to build the Mallow and Carlow sugar plants.
Mr Navratil himself was a beet farmer for 50 years and a leading opponent of moves to kill off the industry here. Since production ceased so abruptly in 2006, he has campaigned tirelessly to get some explanation as to why a thriving industry was allowed to die.
The finding by EU auditors that the closure of the Mallow factory was needless as the business was profitable at the time, vindicates what he has been saying all along.
Mr Navratil said in advance of being closed down, the beet industry was given four options.
* Continue growing sugar but pay a levy equivalent to the profits for four years — €20m per year. Under that, the quota and entitlements for the Irish industry would have been maintained.
* Convert to part ethanol and part sugar production.
* Convert to total ethanol or butanol production.
* Take the compensation of €212m and demolish the factory entirely and do what they want with the land.
Mr Navratil claims that final option was the one Greencore wanted to take because it wanted to get out of the industry and make profits from the sale of the lands.
“The Government was slovenly in its approach. There is no evidence of any of the other options being considered. Also slovenly was the IFA because it did not put up enough resistance,” he said.
Mr Navratil points out when the sugar industry was privatised in 1991, a clause was included which gave a “golden share” to be held by the minister for agriculture.
“That share entitled the minister to a say on the future of the two factories. That meant if Greencore wanted to close the factories it had to be with the minister’s permission. I asked why she did not use that and she replied she did not have the right. Mary Coughlan absolutely and abjectly failed the beet farmers.”
Waterford farmer Mark Connors started growing beet in 2003 and found it to be the most profitable crop he had encountered.
“The price of sugar is currently at a 30-year high. It is knocking on the door of €45 per ton. That the industry was taken away from us at the stroke of a pen was criminal.”
