Sugar - dilemmas and hypocrisy

By Matt Dempsey

We have known for some time that the Irish sugar industry is vulnerable. It is one of the few Irish sectors that lacks intrinsic competitiveness within an EU, let alone a global framework - which is precisely why there are national quotas.

These are being undermined by European sugar imports into Ireland but also by own goals such as the withdrawal by Nestle from Mallow and with it 10% of the entire national sugar output. Output which will now have to be exported on to vulnerable Third Countries. The end of the Carlow plant has now been decided.

No organisation has done more to dismantle the EU sugar regime than Oxfam the UK based charity. By a mixture of manipulated media propaganda and political opportunism they have now achieved, in principle the abolition of probably the most effective aid instrument of the CAP.

By the EU ensuring that the poor in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific had access to the best large market in the world for sugar, huge amounts of extra revenue went to these countries. That policy is now heading for the grave - a fact recognised by everybody as presenting real difficulties for the poor.

Recently in a special World Bank report it says that many poor countries are going to be significantly worse off from the making worthless of their special access to the EU market. The beneficiaries will be the super efficient and super rich of Brazil.

The EU is now saying that it will help these countries diversify etc but maintain that there is no way out of abolishing their preferential access to the EU market. In a breathtaking about turn Oxfam is now saying that the good access the poor countries enjoy to the EU should not be eroded.

The lesson is quite clear - beware of charities with half-baked policies or political agendas - or both. That, however is of little consolation. Irish farmers beet growers and their families.

The challenge now is to keep the Mallow plant open and to develop some serious alternative crop for the Carlow region. Neither is going to be easy. It is a sad end to a proud chapter.