Opinion: This morning sees the inaugural meeting of the Private Sector Forum, which was set up to engage Irish business in private sector development in poorer countries. It is the brainchild of Tom Kitt, the Minister of State for Development Co-operation and Human Rights, and comes under the auspices of Development Co-operation Ireland.

It is a very worthwhile idea and the first meeting has set itself the refreshingly modest ambition of establishing if any Irish companies are even interested in the concept of forging relationships that can be "either commercial and beneficial to both the Irish and foreign partner, or provide scope for an altruistic engagement".

Today's seminar will be addressed by Niall Fitzgerald, the outgoing head of Unilever, and Donal Tierney, the chief executive of Cross Vetpharm.

It will be interesting to see if anyone turns up from Greencore. If they do, they might want to get together with Mr Kitt to peruse a report published last week by Oxfam. The report, Dumping on the World, takes a look at EU sugar policies and how they hamper global efforts to reduce poverty.

It starts with the Common Agricultural Policy and ends up with the larger sugar refiners, via the big farmers. The conclusion is that, every year, Europe produces a surplus of around five million tonnes of expensively produced sugar, which is then effectively dumped on world markets.

Oxfam produces a complex argument to counter the EU's equally complex position that it does not subsidise sugar exports. Oxfam concludes that, despite what Brussels says, the EU spends €3.30 in subsidies for every €1 worth of sugar it exports.

The biggest culprit, in Oxfam's eyes, is the French company Beghin Say, which it calculates receives export subsidies of €236 million. Europe's largest producer, Sudzucker gets €201 million and Britain's Tate and Lyle gets €158 million. It works out at something in the region of €500 per tonne.

Greencore - which has 100 per cent of the Republic's sugar quota and is the only sugar producer in the State - does not figure in the Oxfam analysis. But, according to Oxfam, the general principle applies.

According to the Central Statistics Office, the State exports around 15,000 tonnes of sugar a year to non-EU countries. If you use Oxfam's calculations, the amount paid by the EU to subsidise this is up to €33 million.

Between €4.7 million and €7.8 million goes to Greencore, depending on how much of it is grown under quota. The higher figure represents 17 per cent of the profits earned by Greencore's sugar, malt and agribusiness unit last year.

To put these subsidies into perspective, you have to consider that the Republic's total foreign aid budget is €480 million. Two of the biggest recipients are Mozambique, which got €31 million last year, and Ethiopia, which got €28 million.

According to Oxfam, the impact of the EU's sugar dumping activities in terms of lost export sales on those two countries is €31.5 million and €19 million respectively.

There is something vaguely obscene about a situation where the impact of Ireland's aid budget to two of the world's poorest counties is cancelled out by the impact of the EU sugar regime, to which we are a party.

But that is the way of the world in which we live and Greencore must operate. Even if it was of a mind to do so, it would be a facile gesture for Greencore to unilaterally withdraw from exporting sugar outside Europe. It is also unlikely that such a move would find favour with shareholders.

But the company cannot be let off the hook completely for reasons of pragmatism. As the sole processor of sugar here, it is one of the three constituents of the Irish sugar industry (the others being the farmers and the Government) and has an important role in shaping the Republic's policy on reform of the EU's sugar regime.

To that effect, Oxfam makes a couple of recommendations that are worthy of consideration and have the added attraction of not being completely naive. The most significant of these is a cut in the EU sugar quota over the next 10 years or so and end exports and facilitate imports from the least developed countries.

If Greencore and the other players bought into this, it really would be a case of charity beginning at home.