A bill put before Dáil Éireann seeking to ban the practice of selling beef below the cost of production was voted down by 69 votes to 57 on Wednesday in the last vote to be put to TDs before the country heads to the polls.

Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín TD expressed disappointment in Government TDs for using “their final vote of this Dáil to slap rural Ireland in the face."

“The beef market is distorted and dysfunctional. It’s asymmetric. Factories have enormous buyer power while farmers have practically no supplier power,” he said after the vote.

“A small number of factories and supermarket multiples are making hundreds of millions of euro of profit on the backs of the poverty and debt of beef farmers."

The Meath West TD stated that this imbalance in the beef supply chain is “unsustainable” and is “pushing farmers off the land."

“All this is happening in the context of the EU-Mercosur trade deal which will represent the final nail on the coffin of the Irish beef farmer.

“The deal makes no environmental sense and will see Irish beef farmers shafted by the EU in favour of substandard South American beef, where deforestation, forest fires and overgrazing are all part of the agricultural method, not to mention the huge carbon cost of importing that beef to Europe."