Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney has expressed hope that there will be prosecutions in Ireland over the horsemeat scandal, though he conceded existing regulations on labelling may make it difficult to bring prosecutions against all parties involved.
Mr Coveney said that there was an undoubted fraud perpetrated on consumers when burgers labelled as beef were found to contain horsemeat but an issue has arisen around the role of middle men in the mislabelling of product.
"There was wrongdoing here and I would like to see prosecutions as a result of that if we can secure them but that will be a decision for the DPP to make on the issue of false labelling," said Mr Coveney speaking in Cork.
"There is a problem with country of origin labelling and accuracy labelling in terms of labelling fraud and this is one of the areas that we need to strengthen legislation at European Union level," he added.
"As I say, I will leave it to the DPP but we have done everything we possibly can to expose in full what happened and who was responsible and with very few exceptions, the Irish food industry as a whole has behaved appropriately throughout this process," he said.
Files on the matter will be sent to the DPP by the Garda National Bureau of Fraud Investigation as well as by the Special Investigations Unit at the Department of Agriculture and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland who were all involved in the investigation, he said.
Mr Coveney said that while the Irish investigation is complete, a linked investigation in the UK is still continuing in relation to meat product which came from Poland and was then tampered with in the UK before being sent on to Ireland.
"There are also traders that operate on both sides of the border on this island who are also under investigation so we have to wait until the UK authorities finalise their investigations before I can either publish them or comment on them fully."
Mr Coveney said that while the scandal in Ireland was caused by the actions of a small and unscrupulous minority, the manner in which the scandal was discovered and responded to by the Irish authorities has helped enhance Ireland’s reputation as a quality food producer.
"I think it’s important to say the main problem here was imported and the vast majority of the people in the Irish food industry are doing a really good job," said Mr Coveney, adding that everyone now understands the scandal was a Europe-wide problem.
"I would say even though this scandal began in Ireland, people across the EU now see Ireland as being the country that had the systems to expose this early .... I think the reputation of the Irish food industry will be enhanced in terms of the rigour of our systems in responding to it."
