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SOLE Seafood and Grill on Drury Street, a busy area in the city centre, has received a protest made up of around 40 farmers. Alamy Stock Photo
Bord Bia chair
Farmers protest outside Larry Murrin-linked restaurant after row sparked by Irish Times review
SOLE Seafood and Grill on Drury Street has received a protest made up of around 40 farmers after the Irish Times published a food review on the restaurant’s offerings.
LAST UPDATE | 50 mins ago
A GROUP OF farmers is currently protesting outside the Dublin restaurant part-owned by the chairman of Bord Bia, Larry Murrin.
SOLE Seafood and Grill on Drury Street, a busy area in the city centre, has received a protest made up of around 40 farmers (according to the Irish Farmers’ Association) after the Irish Times published a food review on the restaurant’s offerings.
Headlined ‘I’m in shock – €35 for chicken supreme using non-free-range Dutch chicken’, the review included a number of claims about the origin of some of the fish and other meat as being from outside Ireland.
The restaurant’s website said its philosophy “honours seafood sustainability and local Irish producers”.
Larry Murrin is already an unpopular figure among many farmers after revelations earlier this year that he had been importing some Brazilian beef for his company Dawn Farms.
Murrin told an Oireachtas committee earlier this year that his company sourced “less than 1%” of its beef from Brazil last year.
Following the controversy, the IFA staged lengthy protests at Bord Bia offices at the start of the year as it repeatedly called for Murrin to either step aside from his role or be removed as chair.
The IFA’s poultry chair Brendan Soden told The Journal that the organisation is still calling for Murrin to step down.
“After being revealed now in the last week over that food review, I think [it's] pure hypocrisy now at the minute that he’s a part owner rather in a restaurant that claims on the website to support Irish produce and Irish producers, and almost nothing in the restaurant was Irish, apart from maybe one or two things,” Soden said.
In a statement, the restaurant said it sources as much of its product from within Ireland as possible, but that “it has not been possible” to source a consistent and timely supply of chicken breast product.
“We have purchased our high-quality chicken breast product from an EU based supplier to a highly reputable Irish-owned distributor,” the restaurant said.
“Much of our other products, for example beef, lobster, oysters, mussels… are sourced within Ireland. Where products are not available locally, our sourcing model is traceable, ethical and environmentally robust, balancing Irish provenance with certified global sustainability.”
Soden said of the restaurant: “Anybody’s entitled to run their own private business the way they see fit. But not when he’s in the position he’s in, of representing Irish food. That’s the main cut of it. He’s holding that position. He should be supporting farmers, and he should be supporting Irish produce.”
The IFA poultry chair said it’s very frustrating for Irish farmers who are part of quality assurance schemes and who are told the Bord Bia stamp helps market their produce.
“Then we have the chair of the organisation that we’re all members of doing whatever he likes and selling whatever he likes, and not giving any producers or any Irish produce any support, especially in these high-end restaurants.”
Dawn Farm Foods has been contacted for comment.
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