DEAR SIR: Please find below the text of a letter I sent to the chair of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, Ms Isolde Goggin, copying Ministers Humphreys and Creed.

“Dear Ms Goggin: I have an urgent complaint and demand the immediate investigation of what I believe to be a cartel operating in the Irish beef industry. I wish to inform you of what appears to me to be an ongoing breach of competition law in the terms and conditions of the purchase of cattle by beef processors from farmers.

I believe that confirmation of a cartel in the beef-processing industry was established and put on public display in the recent meetings between Meat Industry Ireland-IBEC (MII-IBEC) and farmers.

MII-IBEC had authority from all the major companies in the industry, purchasing cattle from farmers, to act in unison on their behalf.

In the course of these meetings, MII co-ordinated the terms and conditions of trade in the purchase of cattle, thereby influencing the price paid to farmers.

I believe this concerted practice is in clear breach of competition law and I am hereby requesting you to open an immediate investigation into what I think is a detrimental cartel operating in the Irish beef industry, and its devastating effect on beef and suckler farmers. This matter is of great urgency for the entire farming community.

As an immediate first step, I am calling on the Competition Authority to enforce the law and instruct MII to desist from setting the terms and conditions for the purchase of cattle on behalf of the country’s beef processors. Specifically the following conditions: cattle over 30 months, 70 days of on-farm residency and the four movements. These conditions of purchase set by MII on behalf of the country’s beef processors cost farmers €33,520,680 in 2018.

I await your immediate response.”