Remember the Ronseal advertisements? Its slogan was “it does exactly what it says on the tin”. Perhaps the Governance Ireland report on Bord Bia could be described as a “Ronseal” one. The review was entitled “independent external board effectiveness review” and it looked at how effective the board, and the chair are. And nothing else.

It comes as little surprise that Larry Murrin had a very positive score from his fellow board members. Throughout his life, he has displayed ability and capability, building up Dawn Farm Foods into a large and successful company. In the Oireachtas committee hearing he cut an impressive figure, fielding questions from all sides with a fair degree of aplomb.

But the question posed by farmers was not whether Larry Murrin was an effective chair of Bord Bia, it was about whether he was an appropriate one.

Appropriate specifically in the light of his company’s importation of Brazilian beef when leading the State agency that has among its portfolio of duties the marketing of Irish food, the oversight of the quality assurance schemes at farm level and the development of both the quality assurance and Origin Green brands.

That was the issue that led two Bord Bia board members, Francie Gorman and Denis Drennan, to express no confidence in him. These two board members happen to be the leaders of the country’s two largest farm organisations. That is why the IFA camped outside Bord Bia’s offices for five weeks, and inside for four. And the review offers no opinion or illumination on that issue.

The second part of the review’s title is self-explanatory “commissioned by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine”. This review process, which ended the IFA’s five-week protest, was called for by Martin Heydon, and he set the terms of reference.

By limiting the review to matters of governance, the other, central issues, were neatly sidestepped. The chair of Bord Bia is a political appointment, selected by the minister of the day. Of course, this chair was not appointed by the current minister. But does the loss of confidence in the chair among food producers not count for something?

Another thing we learned is that conflict of interest issues are not absolute, but rather are subjective. There is significant merit in having food producers and food processors working together around the table with the State food marketing body, but there will always be pinch points.

It’s become evident that the perspective of a farmer as to what constitutes a conflict of interest is very different to that of a processor. With Irish beef under significant pressure from Australian and New Zealand imports into the UK on top of the impact of Mercosur within the EU, and with fruit and vegetable growers and tillage farmers under genuine pressure, there is an urgent need for all sides to find a way to work past this issue. But that doesn’t mean this report has resolved, or even addressed, all the issues around Bord Bia.