The Associated Craft Butchers of Ireland may refer the €50 million aid package for beef and sheepmeat processing, announced this week by the Government, to the Competition Authority.
The special investment aid package for the processing sector was formally launched by Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan this week. She said it should trigger investment of €120 million in the meat plants.
The fund is to be managed by Enterprise Ireland and is being put in place to support capital investment in plants to increase scale in primary processing, increase added value in further processing and improve the efficiency of the factories.
But yesterday Pat Brady, whose organisation represents most of the family butchers' shops on the island, described the scheme as "a direct and discriminatory attack on small and local processors and abattoirs".
"The fact is that many of these so-called export companies are highly active in the home market in competition with butchers and small local processors and speciality meat companies supplying restaurants and hotels," he said.
He claimed that despite repeatedly asking the Department of Agriculture what steps had been taken to ensure that any company assisted under the scheme would not be put at a competitive advantage, his queries had been ignored.
"How, for example, will the department ensure that any work undertaken on foot of this grant aid will not act as a de facto subsidy for a company which also wholesales in the Irish market," he continued.
He said he wondered if this was the latest department initiative to rid Ireland of small meat businesses?
"In the late 1990s and for some years afterwards it went on an orgy of closures in the abattoir sector, most of which were unjustified, reducing total numbers from about a thousand to just over 200 today and transferring that capacity to the large meat plants," he said.
He claimed that the department's commitment to the Irish meat industry did not appear to include the small business or artisan sector.
Mr Brady said that the organisation was now considering referring the matter to the Competition Authority.
The establishment of the fund was welcomed by Meat Industry Ireland, the group representing the country's major beef and lamb processing companies.
It said the initiative was essential to achieve improved structure, scale and efficiencies in the beef and lamb processing sector.