The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, and the Tβnaiste, Ms Harney, will today meet both sides in the dispute over sugar beet prices to farmers, Marie O'Halloran reports.
Mr Walsh told the Dβil he was "most disappointed" at the lack of progress in resolving the dispute despite meetings over four days last week. The sugar manufacturing season "is now well under way and many farmers are ready to deliver their crop. I am very concerned that this matter be resolved quickly".
He said the gravity of the situation was such that "25,000 tonnes of sugar has been imported and I expect a lot more will be imported if a resolution is not found".
The Minister confirmed to Mr Simon Coveney (FG, Cork South-Central) that the Government's mediator, Mr Paddy Teahon had intimated that a solution "might be based around two euro plus one euro following on from that. I understand that was acceptable to the IFA but not to Greencore".
Commenting on the Minister's statement and the proposed meeting later today, the Irish Farmers' Association president, Mr Tom Parlon, said the IFA would be pressing for the immediate appointment of a regulator to ensure fair dealing by the Greencore monopoly, Sean MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent, adds.
He said that after 11 months of talks, including the intervention of the Government-appointed mediator, Greencore had provoked the present deadlock in "an attempt to sustain its excessive profit margins in Irish sugar while denying beet growers even modest compensation for their rising costs".