As long as Larry Murrin remains chair of Bord Bia, farmers will not have confidence in the organisation, Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) president Francie Gorman told Northen Sound.

Speaking on the radio station, the IFA president said that it has “always been our position and it hasn’t changed”.

“It’s not really about whether I have confidence in the chair or not, it’s about whether farmers have confidence in the chairman.

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“Farmers are never going to have confidence in a chairman in Bord Bia that is importing products from Brazil. This report acknowledges that Bord Bia have huge issues to deal with – around the chair, governance, conflicts of interest, around Origin Green.

“This whole issue of product coming in from abroad has shattered confidence in Bord Bia.

“I think everybody needs to look at themselves and decide how best can we restore confidence in Bord Bia and have a Bord Bia is going to be effective going forward with farmer confidence," he said.

Origin Green

He said that the quality assurance scheme that farmers are part of and everything that Bord Bia does, the whole Origin Green concept is built on top of that.

"The review called out the Origin Green accreditation and what it stands for in a huge way and highlighted the fact that the board, including myself, weren’t 100% clear what Origin Green stands for. I think that’s a really important issue that needs to be clarified and that was never done in the way it should have been done.

"It is one of the things that has to be acted on in a big way when we get the recommendations of the report put in place.”