The suggestion yesterday by the Green Party that the Carlow sugar factory be converted to produce ethanol rather than close down, was perhaps the most positive opinion of the day.
While Greencore is the only organisation saying out loud that Ireland's sugar processing industry is in deep trouble, few are putting forward alternative plans for it.
In essence, the main problem for the sugar industry in Ireland is the World Trade Organisation trying to force reform on the EU's highly subsidised and tariff-protected sugar regime.
Under the EU regime, a national quota in respect of manufactured sugar is allocated to each member-state.
Ireland has a national quota of almost 200,000 tonnes, or about 1.15 per cent of the EU total, and this is vested in the Minister for Agriculture who has allocated this to Irish Sugar. The company, now owned by Greencore, has contracts to grow sugar beet with 3,700 farmers to a value of around €80 million annually.
However, the EU has decided that it must cut back on its support for the industry and the current system can only remain in place until 2006.
The EU proposal provides for a 25 per cent beet price cut in 2005 and 2006 and a 37 per cent cut in 2007, along with a European quota reduction of 2.8 million tonnes or 16 per cent over four years.
This will impact on the growers as will plans to allow greater access to sugar from non-EU countries, especially Brazil.
The debate about who owns the sugar industry, the producers or the 56 companies operating sugar factories in 21 member- states, is ongoing and will ultimately determine whether or not sugar beet quotas can be transferred from one State to another.
Oxfam and other NGOs have been targeting the EU sugar regime with claims that its highly subsidised product is being dumped on world markets disadvantaging some of the world's poorest producers.
Producers in Europe are fighting back saying that Brazil's sugar industry is controlled by 100 growers who use what is akin to slave labour from Mexico to harvest the crop and in doing so destroy rain forests in order to expand their crop base.
All those opposed to the Carlow closure yesterday were in agreement that the decision was taken too soon and too far ahead of agreement on a new EU sugar regime.