The review into governance at Bord Bia will miss its original deadline by two months, it has emerged.

“We have tendered for the process, and we have hired Governance Ireland to carry that out,” Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon told the Irish Farmers Journal.

“I’m not going to be stuck to an arbitrary date or a specific date. This needs to be done correctly. But I always said, it does need to be done swiftly.”

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However, the review only began on 13 April, and the four-phase process is scheduled to take nine weeks, which means it will be the end of June before it is completed.

Crucial

The governance review was crucial to the agreement brokered within the board of Bord Bia that saw the IFA’s protest at the continuing presence of Larry Murrin as chair of the Irish food board end.

That protest had continued for five weeks, including four weeks of a sit-in in Bord Bia’s head office in Ballsbridge.

Murrin will continue to stand aside as the chair of Bord Bia’s board while the review is ongoing.

However, IFA national livestock chair Declan Hanrahan has said Murrin was called on step down permanently from his role at the last meeting of Bord Bia’s meat and livestock subsidiary board.

“It was clear from the contributions made by the members present at the meeting that a majority of the board had lost confidence in Larry Murrin as the Bord Bia chair.

“However, a democratic vote was not allowed to take place by the chair of the meat and livestock board and the CEO of Bord Bia who was present at the meeting,” he claimed.

“Before the meeting ended I presented a letter to the chair signed by a majority of the members present at the meeting, calling for Larry Murrin to resign in the best interests of the organisation.”