A DEPARTMENT of Agriculture report on high antibiotic residue levels in Irish pork was made known by officials in the Department to pig producers and processors more than two weeks before the Minister, Mr Yates, was informed.
The Minister heard about it from the Minister for Health Mr Noonan, at a Cabinet meeting 2 1/2 weeks ago.
It was confirmed last night that officials at the Department of Agriculture met representatives of pig producers and processors four weeks ago, to give them a severe "telling off" about the antibiotic residue report.
A Department spokesman confirmed also that neither the report nor the meeting were brought to the attention of Mr Yates by his officials at the time, or subsequently. He was briefed on both for the first time after an antibiotic residue report, drawn up by the Consumers' Association of Ireland, was published in the media.
The Department spokesman said there had been "no intention" to hide either the report or the officials' meeting with pig producers/processors from Mr Yates, but that "for some reason or another there had been no communication [on either matter] with the Minister's office".
There were, he said, "a whole host of other things" going on, and he instanced the beef negotiations with the Russians, the BSE crisis, and the angel dust controversy.
He said the Minister would "always have become aware [anyhow], because the consumers' association would have been made aware". He agreed it was "not satisfactory" that a Minister should have to depend on an outside agency for knowledge of what was going on in his own Department.
Yesterday the Progressive Democrats TD, Mr Desmond O'Malley, asked: "Does the Department of Agriculture treat its own Minister as if he were an innocent child who is told some things but has other information withheld from him? Will he now claim, like his colleague, the Minister for Justice, that he has no responsibility or accountability for things happening in his Department about which he did not know?
Mr O'Malley said that, on Thursday last, at a meeting of the select committee on enterprise and economic strategy, he had asked Mr Yates for the dates on which he became aware of the pork antibiotic residue problem.
Mr Yates replied that it was during a Cabinet meeting about 2 1/2 weeks ago.
Mr O'Malley said it transpired later, from a question by Mr Ned O'Keeffe TD, that officials from the Department of Agriculture privately met representatives of the pig producers and pig processors six weeks ago to explain to them the gravity of the situation.
The Department spokesman said last night, however, that the meeting referred to took place four weeks ago.
