Ireland's dairy industry relies heavily on EU intervention, warned the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, yesterday.
The Minister produced figures which showed that at the end of the year there were stocks of 68,000 tonnes of Irish butter and 54,000 tonnes of skim milk powder. "This represents 30 per cent of butter and 26 per cent of skim milk powder within the EU," he said. "This is a very high figure remembering that Ireland accounts for only 4.5 per cent of dairy production within the Union."
This was worrying, Mr Walsh said, because the Commission wanted to get rid of intervention.
The Minister also announced that there was no Irish beef being held in EU intervention. He praised Irish processors and producers who were now selling into markets which had recovered from the last BSE crisis.
The EU market, he said, had returned to balance with consumption standing at 7.3 million tonnes which would exceed production by some 140,000 tonnes.