There isn’t a cold store in the country that could take any more beef as factories find themselves unable to sell beef amid a consumer demand slump, Meat Industry Ireland (MII) has claimed.

MII’s chair Philip Carroll said that this stockpile of beef built up despite factories ticking at 80% capacity over recent months, rather than running at full speed as would have been expected for this stage of the year.

“There isn't a cold story store in the country that you can find capacity to put processed product in and I had that fully verified yesterday and again this morning,” Carroll stated to the Oireachtas agriculture committee.

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“And the scenario is that what you actually do when you're processing is you're processing to contracts and the contracts are not there at the moment, not there at the level that they would normally be expected to be there, because we've dropped 10% in our output going into the UK, and that's essentially the problem we're facing at the moment.”

Downwards since July

Carroll – a former secretary general at the Department of Agriculture – said that beef prices hit their ceiling around July 2025, after which supermarkets adjusted their buying and selling strategies to cater for the lower demand these high prices supposedly brough about.

His colleague MII director Dale Crammond suggested that since this peak, hindquarter wholesale prices decreased from €9.64/kg to €8.75/kg and that while forequarter hasn’t quite declined at the same rate, there are signs emerging of “problems in manufacturing beef”.

“That is the evidence. That is the evidence that shows the challenges in the marketplace at the moment,” the MII director, who is a former official in the departments of agriculture and foreign affairs, told the committee during a heated exchange with Willie Aird TD on beef price cuts.

UK pressure

An approximate decline of 10% in the volumes of beef headed from Ireland to the UK is “essentially the problem we're facing at the moment,” Carroll claimed.

He had opened his remarks to the committee by stating that the “UK market has shifted”.

“Historically, Ireland provided nearly 80% of UK beef imports. Following the UK-Australia and UK-New Zealand free trade agreements and growth in Brazilian imports, Ireland’s market share fell to 67% in 2025.

“Australian beef imports into the UK have surged by over 400%, offering a significantly lower-cost alternative to Irish grass-fed beef.

“There is little scope for us to price ourselves out of this market, nor can we diversify to greener fields where none exist.”