The office of the Agri-Food Regulator enters 2026 with new powers and two new information dashboards launched. Chief executive Niamh Lenehan explained to the Irish Farmers Journal its direction of travel as the body continues the journey to enforce Unfair Trading Practices (UTP) legislation and bring transparency to the Irish agri-food industry.

Just before Christmas, Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon announced that the additional powers requested by the Agri-Food Regulator board were being granted. These will compel all participants in the agri-food supply chain to supply market information requested by the Agri-Food Regulator and will come into effect on 31 December 2026.

Lenehan declined to comment in detail on the announcement before the board has a chance to consider it. However, she did say that the coming year will be used for “preparation and to put the infrastructure in place” and that they “want to be ready to go at the end of the year when all is in place”.

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The request for powers to compel release of information was made by the board in September 2024, because not all retailers agreed to do so voluntarily. The new powers should mean that the missing gap from the retail side of the supply chain on beef prices will be filled in.

Two years on

The office of Agri-Food Regulator came into effect in December 2023 with a dual brief: enforcement of UTP legislation and bring transparency to the food chain. It is the latter that is of particular interest across all sectors of Irish farming, though prosecutions have been brought under the UTP legislation as well.

Market information dashboards are now published by the Agri-Food Regulator on beef, dairy, egg and poultry, horticulture and the recently added fruit and sheep categories.

In general, these bring together information that is produced and published in different places, and they are published on its website. For beef, an additional calculation is performed to create a processor composite price for beef forequarter, hindquarter and mince which is updated weekly, as shown in Figure 1. A similar calculation isn’t performed on sheepmeat – a seemingly obvious omission which Irish Farmers Journal put to Lenehan.

Sheepmeat phase 1

She explained that “we have started with the information that is publicly available and we are currently liaising with processors on how the transparency could be improved there”.

When asked if what was published then was just phase 1 of a larger project, she agreed, adding that “they are all in fact phase 1, an initial step on a journey across all sectors”.

Lenehan sees that getting the information that is available out as being “useful in highlighting gaps” and went on to invite feedback.

“We want to hear from people about the usefulness of these and what they would like [to see],” she said.

With an ambition to produce more information – not just on sheep but other sectors as well – the obvious next question was about a timeline. Lenehan could not be specific.

“We are actively engaging with processors at the moment, exploring different ideas. We felt with the sheep report that we should publish what we have and hopefully come back with more in the new year,” she said.

As for the level of cooperation, Lenehan seemed satisfied with the engagement from the supply chain, without being over enthusiastic.

She explained: “Across the board, it’s obvious that a culture change is needed in terms of the improving transparency, because if a culture change wasn’t needed, we wouldn’t be here.”

As the discussion progressed, it is clear that the office of the Agri-Food Regulator has plenty of ambition, even if delivery may appear slow from the outside. Despite securing new powers, Lenehan retains a strong preference for the collaborative approach across the supply chain.

Any discussion on transparency in the supply chain would not be complete without reference to what is available in the US through the USDA which is considered the best in class.

Call to action

It is probably too ambitious to think we might get to that level in Ireland in the foreseeable future but Lenehan is thinking ahead.

“We are starting work on a new strategy to cover the three years 2027-2029 and this has to be with the minister by September,” she explained.

She also issued a call to action for stakeholder engagement on the strategy, saying: “It’s not for the regulator to decide what the sector wants, and while our door is always open, this will be a significant opportunity [for stakeholders] to feed into the strategy.”

Comment: progress being made, slowly

From the outside, it appears that the road to bringing transparency to the agri-food industry beyond the farmgate is long and slow. What is clear however is that the office of the Agri-Food Regulator is working diligently on this as well as enforcing the UTP legislation. It was unfortunate that it started off on the wrong foot without having the adequate powers to compel businesses to reveal the information requested. However, while it may have taken over two years, by the end of this year, it will be in place.

The office is also thinking ahead and the preparation of a new strategy is an opportunity for everyone that is interested to have their say on the direction of travel for the last three years of this decade.

The bottom line is, while we may have wanted the office of the Agri-Food Regulator to go further faster, there is now something where there was nothing before.

Transparency in the supply chain is the key to building confidence in farmers that they are getting true market value for their produce. This may not be so much of an issue when farmgate prices are good – as has been the case for much of this year, particularly in beef and until recently dairy. However, when markets are weaker, without being able to see the prices processors are receiving, farmers are in the dark.

Transparency further along the supply chain may not in itself improve farmgate prices but it would increase farmers’ understanding of them.