TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen said that an unsuitable oil product at a plant seemed to be the source of the contamination when he answered Dáil questions on the dioxin scare.

Mr Cowen said that the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) had said that it was the likely source and the investigations continued. “The owners are being spoken to about that to get to the bottom of it. The oil should not have been used by the owners of the plant,” he added.

“It has had this outcome. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the FSAI have reacted to that and we are in this position as a result of it.”

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore referred to the Taoiseach’s comments about getting to the bottom of the matter.

“Has the Taoiseach got to the bottom of it?,” he asked.

Mr Gilmore said there would be time to go back over what happened.

“Action had to be taken to recall the products, but I am not seeing a sense of urgency, although I do not want to be critical in this regard, about getting the product moving again,” he added.

Mr Cowen said there was a sense of urgency involved, but “it is also necessary to show a degree of calm and demonstrate the comprehensiveness of the Government’s response as a means of bolstering confidence”.

They should not project beyond the scientific facts of the situation, because people would start to add two and two and get six, he said. That was not a good thing, particularly when one was talking about consumer confidence.

“The central issue is that we have identified the source of the contamination and the units that received the feed,” he added.

“We have restricted those herds from going into the food chain. We then had to apply the precautionary principle with regard to the products that were already on the market.”

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny asked what the Government’s reponse was to the EU’s refusal to allow for a compensation package for processors who were not bluffing on this occasion and could simply not meet the financial pressure of disposing of stock already in situ.

Mr Cowen said it was not correct to suggest that support was turned down. “An official from the European Commission has outlined its position. We are in discussion with processors to devise the parameters of a general scheme which will be submitted to the EU,” he added.

“I am confident that private storage will receive assistance. We will make the case for other aspects of the scheme to help processors once this is agreed.”

The Government, he said, was in the process of devising the scheme which would form the basis of the discussions between Commissioner Fischer Boel and the Minister.

Mr Cowen said the Government would work very hard with the industry and with major customers to provide all the assurance it could, using the Department of Agriculture, attaches in various markets, the Department of Foreign Affairs and embassies.