Committee to probe relaunch of sugar plant

AN Oireachtas committee is to investigate why the Irish sugar beet industry was shut down and, furthermore, explore ways of negotiating a new sugar quota with the EU to restart the industry.

The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Food wants to establish the detail of discussions between Greencore, the Government and the European Commission, before the company took the decision to close the Mallow sugar beet factory in Co Cork in 2006 with the loss of some 320 jobs.

The decision— which EU auditors said was unnecessary because the business was profitable — left Ireland as the only EU country without a sugar beet industry.

The committee’s work will begin next Tuesday when the secretary general of the Department of Agriculture, Tom Moran, and his officials are due to appear before it.

Greencore executives, including Philip Odlum, managing director of its legal properties and agri-business division, are due to attend a committee meeting the following week.

Greencore will be asked about its decision to close the Mallow plant under a European Commission scheme to eliminate unprofitable sugar production.

However, EU auditors found in a report last November, which did not specifically name the plant, that it had cost more to close the business than it would have cost to keep it open.

The committee will also seek meetings with Ireland’s farming bodies and with European Commission officials over the coming months.

North Cork-based Fine Gael senator Paul Bradford, who asked the committee to launch the inquiry, said he wants to establish “all the facts and figures involved in the discussions” before the decision to shut the Mallow plant was taken.

He hopes there will be an all-party approach to the work.

“This decision, it is now accepted, appears to have been based on wrong figures,” the senator said. “There is no point in replaying the blame game. We need to move forward and explore all our political options at domestic and EU level.”

He said the committee will examine ways of restarting the industry, and explore renewable-energy crop production. Sen Bradford said the price of sugar on world markets had increased and Ireland should be in a strong position to negotiate a new sugar quota with European Commission officials.

Meanwhile, Mallow-based Labour TD Seán Sherlock, also a member of the committee, said he hopes it will explore the possibility of a state-funded feasibility study into the future of the industry.