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Despite gloom over the knock-on effects of Britain's beef crisis, Irish operators meeting in conference recently took comfort from a Government prepared to back them when the going gets tough.
Home Rule was introduced in 1922, but the Irish Republic retains strong economic links with Britain. When the UK catches a cold the Irish reach for their handkerchiefs, knowing it could be their turn next.
So it has proved with the beef crisis. England's failure to control 13SE in its cattle feed brought the Irish grass-fed cattle industry to the brink of collapse. Its traditional markets on the Continent and the Middle East wobbled, with Egypt, at one point, leaving a ship-load of Irish cattle becalmed and bewildered in port while the importer refused to unload them.
Things have since improved. Fearing for 10,000 meat industry jobs the Irish Government stepped in with a LIR2.5m aid package earlier this month to bail out renderera and processors. These are the factories that turn beef offal into bonemeal and a ban on the use of bonemeal by the pig and poultry industries prevented them selling at home or abroad. With a threatened cessation in offal processing, cattle could not be slaughtered as environmental regulations prevent offal being stored. Now the renderers have a breathing space—six weeks beginning from the second week in April—in which they will be paid to store unsold bonemeal produced from offal, keeping at least part of the beef chain moving. And, of course, Irish beef is not banned in Europe even, if like any bovine product just now, it is not flavour of the month. The crisis led to gloomy faces at the Irish Road Haulage Conference over Easter in Galway, where so many operators either work directly for, or have links with the meat industry. Jimmy Quinn, president of the IRHA and managing director of Continental Perishables at Greenore usually has seven reefers out of a fleet of 11 exporting Irish beef to Italy. By Easter this was down to one run a week "We have six vehicles standing idle costing us £1,500 a week," he says, "Once something like this happens people stop eating the product— it does not matter if it conies from Mars." Following the Government's intervention Quinn is hoping that things will start returning to normal but adds that the "export scene is still very depressed". Much of the meat now being produced is going into cold storage for eventual shipping to third-world countries. No benefit there for hauliers.
John Guilfoyle, running John Guilfoyle Transport in Roscrea, Co Tipperary was having similar problems. One of his main contracts is carrying meat to boning plants from slaughterhouses. Four of his 20 vehicles saw their work disappear. Fortunately, other hauliers in his neighbourhood had over-capacity' and offered him dry-freight loads: "It was not a question of ringing them up, they con tacted me," he says with a relieved air.
Perhaps the gold is in the grain. Jerry Kiersey, managing director of Dublin-based Blueflite, recounts how Irish hauliers once discovered they were not being properly recompensed for distributing intervention grain by the forwarders involved, despite payment up front by the EC: "We rumbled them and got a 50i) increase." lie says.
CI by Patric Ctumane