Quotas would cover a new sugar industry

ANY PROPOSAL to re-establish a sugar factory in Ireland would be subject to the issue of EU sugar quotas and would ultimately be a commercial decision by interested parties, Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith said yesterday.

He added it would be up to the European Commission to examine any proposal to review sugar quotas, which were reduced by almost 6 million tonnes as part of a restructuring agreed under a 2005 World Trade Organisation ruling on the EU sugar regime.

Mr Smith was responding yesterday to a European Commission auditors’ report which found the closure of Ireland’s last sugar factory at Mallow with the loss of 324 jobs was unnecessary, as the business was profitable at the time.

The European Court of Auditors report found restructuring of the European sugar industry was based on data from 2001 rather than from 2005, when the commission made reform proposals which led to Greencore’s closure of its plants at Mallow and Carlow.

Fine Gael Cork East TD David Stanton called on the Government to immediately initiate a feasibility study into the restarting of the Irish sugar industry, noting Ireland is now dependent on foreign sugar imports.

“Our perfectly functioning and viable sugar industry should never have been shut down. The Government must initiate a feasibility study into restarting our sugar industry, aligned with ethanol production,” he said.

Kieran Buckley, chairman of the committee of former Irish Sugar workers, said people were “angry at the ineptitude of the then minister for agriculture, Mary Coughlan, who made no effort with agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler. It vexes me to hear her today talking about protecting indigenous jobs when she did nothing to save Mallow.”

Local Cork East Labour TD Seán Sherlock was equally critical of Ms Coughlan, whom he accused of “failing to defend the interests of the Irish sugar industry”.