The Minister for Agriculture has said it is "most unsatisfactory" that the Competition Authority has not made a finding on allegations of price-fixing and cartels in the beef industry.
Speaking to the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine last night, Mr Walsh said he could understand the frustration of deputies and farmers that there had not been an early report on whether there were anti-competitive practices or not in the industry.
The Minister was responding to calls from TDs for the Tanaiste's Department to investigate why there was so little variation in the prices offered to farmers by meat factories. Committee members also called for more powers and resources to be given to the authority.
The Minister said that on foot of the concerns of the minister for agriculture at the time, the Competition Authority began an investigation into practices in the industry in March 1997, "but to date have not produced any definitive findings". He said allegations that meat factories were fixing prices and operating cartels had been strongly denied by the Irish Meat Association.
Mr Walsh said there was a distrust between farmers and factory-owners in the meat sector which did not exist elsewhere. "You don't find that kind of resentment and suspicion in other sectors of the food industry . . . There is no suspicion of a cartel in the dairy industry that I know of," he said.
Describing the build-up to the dispute, the Minister said that "what snapped the whole thing" was that factories had imposed on farmers the burden of a recent increase in inspection fees, "which they shouldn't have done and weren't entitled to do."
The Minister said negotiations were made more difficult by the Irish Farmers' Association no longer having a full executive after Monday night's resignations. He said he had succeeded in having "some indirect contact" with the association only yesterday.
A Fine Gael committee member, Mr Paul Connaughton, said the farmers' protest amounted to "a national uprising. I've never seen such a resolve among farmers . . . They're fighting for their self-esteem," he said. Mr Michael Ferris of Labour said deputies had been "haunted night and day" by farmers who were angry that measures had not been introduced to resolve the problem. He said committee members would support the Minister in passing any legislation that he felt was necessary to resolve the dispute.
Mr Michael Ring of Fine Gael said the Government had not confronted meat-factory owners because "for too long these people were paying the political parties".
At the end of the meeting Mr Walsh said he had received "a wallop" from Mr Justice O'Donovan in the High Court last week. The judge had said he should ask the IFA to remove pickets, but he told the committee: "There was no way I was going to do that either then or now."
The Minister said farmers and meat factories would have to realise that they were interdependent. Some factories had come to arrangements with farmers which were working very well and had resulted in farmers obtaining more than £1 per lb.
"Sometimes it does take a very difficult issue like this to concentrate minds and find a solution," Mr Walsh said. He had not been in contact with the beef entrepreneur Mr Larry Goodman about the dispute.
