IFA President Tim Cullinan said that letters issued to over 200 complainants by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) yesterday treated farmers with contempt.
“If the CCPC thinks they have washed their hands of this matter, they are a long way wrong,” he said.
On May 22nd, IFA’s legal representatives wrote to the CCPC Chairperson Isolde Goggin demanding a response to scores of complaints made to the Authority about the beef sector over the last 12 months. The authority had failed to even respond to the complaints.
IFA pointed out that the Authority was failing in its functions. We demanded that they would let IFA and farmers know the outcome of their complaints.
We were clear with the CCPC that if they continued to ignore the complaints, we would seek a judicial review and take an action against them for damages caused to farmers’ livelihoods as a result of its failure to carry out its functions.
We learned that rather than investigating the complaints, it took the CCPC all this time to decide to do nothing, without even an investigation. It’s pathetic,” he said.
“IFA’s legal team is now reviewing the correspondence from the Commission to explore what legal and other options are open to us,” he said.
“In our recent review of the beef sector, Economist Jim Power concluded that it was in everyone’s interest to have an investigation to clear up the matter once and for all. However, the CCPC won’t even try to use its considerable powers to try and seek evidence, despite a huge number of complaints and considerable public disquiet,” he said.
