The food industry in Ireland

The 1970s saw a transformation in the economic position of the food and agricultural sector of the Irish economy. Prior to membership of the EEC, the development of Irish agriculture had been severely curtailed by the limited market opportunities that faced food exports from Ireland. The prospect of membership of a large and prosperous European Community brought a new era for the food sector. These new market opportunities coincided with, and gave incentive to, a technological revolution in food processing in Ireland. The extent of this change can be most graphically seen from a comparison of the small local creameries which played a major role in dairy manufacturing in the 1960s with the large, sophisticated plants of the 1970s.