Blame game offers few sweeteners to workers

Killing off the industry was criminal, hears Stephen Rogers

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”.