The Minister for Agriculture, Mary Coughlan, can draw some comfort from the almost unanimous criticism of her allocation of the sugar industry restructuring fund. Whatever else she has done, the Minister has not favoured any of the interested parties to the extent that they are happy with her decision.
While this may imply a certain Solomon-like balance, it does not necessarily mean that she has made the correct decision. Yesterday's announcement was, above all, a calculated move that the Minister and her colleagues hope will defuse an issue which could provide an unwelcome backdrop to the next election. The Government also had to tread carefully to try and avoid a legal challenge from Greencore.
How successful it has been will become apparent in the next few weeks, but the initial responses from the main players are not promising.
The farmers' lobby has once again failed to recognise a victory. The €40 million that they will receive from the total pot of €145 million allocated yesterday is a substantial increase from the figure of less than €10 million that was originally mooted. When it is added to the €167 million that beet farmers will receive over the next seven years under other schemes it represents a significant level of compensation.
Greencore has also done well, but not as well as it hoped. The company had made clear from an early stage that it believed it should receive the lion's share of the €145 million. Its argument was a simple one. The scheme was intended for sugar processors and contractors rather than farmers.
The farmers have argued that Greencore does not deserve any money because of the massive appreciation in the value of the sugar factory sites since the privatisation of the business by the State in the 1980s. This argument is as irrelevant as its corollary - that the compensation payments to farmers should be adjusted for the increase in value of agricultural land.
The €98 million Greencore will receive is reasonable. It will allow the company to exit sugar processing at little cost, while retaining a number of valuable assets, including its sites and a dominant position in the sugar market here.
Both sides should accept what is on offer and bear the associated pain, the ultimate cause of which is the globalisation of world trade over recent decades. It must be remembered, sadly, that this globalisation has underpinned the economic renaissance of this State over the past decade.