Sir, - The Department of Agriculture's response, through its information officer (January 23rd), to Fintan O'Toole's article "Taxpayers forced to pay up for beef barons once again" is unconvincing and misleading.
The department's information officer condemns as "absolutely false and utterly without foundation" O'Toole's contention that "the Department of Agriculture must have known all along that Bureau Veritas certificates for Irish beef going to Iraq were at best dubious". However, in October 1992, the Department of Agriculture received a report from the European Commission, warning them of its concern regarding the department's acceptance of proofs involving certain certification under the terms of the regulation governing export refunds.
In February 1995, the Commission fined Ireland £2.29m for its non compliance with its duties and obligations under the relevant EU regulations by improperly releasing securities on the basis of the certification offered. In circumstances such as this, Article 11 of the EU Regulation 3665/87 stipulates the course of action the Minister is obliged to take: "Where a refund is unduly paid, the beneficiary shall reimburse the amounts unduly received".
In the present case, the Minister for Agriculture made no effort to recover the sums unduly paid from the beneficiary involved. On the Contrary, he concentrated his efforts on getting the present Government to release to the same beneficiary a further £17m of export refunds, on foot of the same certification as was involved in the Commission's fine of February 1995.
On November 5th, 1996, the Government decided on Mr Yates's recommendation to release the securities involved for the benefit of the same beef baron. Only time will tell whether or not the Irish taxpayer will be forced to pay up for that decision as well.
If the Department of Agriculture is as perfect and blameless as Mr Murphy would have us believe, why has the Irish taxpayer been fined nearly £80m in the past couple of years alone for breaches by that Department of EU beef regulations? If these fines are not unusual, as the department suggests, why were we fined only a total of £76,000 for the eight years 1980 to 1987 inclusive?
Most of the department's errors benefited one meat processor. Why have they never sought to recover any of those monies from the main beneficiary? Instead, they have allowed him to retain this benefit and forced the Irish taxpayer to cough up year after year. For how much longer do we have to put up with this? - Yours, etc.,
Dail Eireann,
Dublin 2.