Chair of Bord Bia Larry Murrin continued to waive his right to both fees and expenses last year, Bord Bia's Annual Report for 2025 shows.

As previously reported by Agriland, the Bord Bia chair has 'waived' his right to both fees and expenses since taking up the role in February 2024.

The fee payable to the chair of Bord Bia is €20,520 annually.

The annual report sets out details of the fees, travel and subsistence expenses paid to Bord Bia board members in respect of attendance at meetings of the board, and where relevant, meetings of the subsidiary boards and board committees, in 2025.

According to Bord Bia, the * in the table above indicates those board members who have waived part or all of the fee or expenses payable, as a board member in 2025.

In relation to ** in the table, Bord Bia said that under the one person one salary principle, no fees were payable to M. Dunne or K. Pierce.

The report notes that N. Browne's term of office ended prior to the first board meeting of the year.

Amounts paid to subsidiary board members for travel and subsistence expenses in 2025 amounted to €11,299.76.

The report stated that no fees were paid to subsidiary board members in 2025 in relation to attendance at subsidiary board meetings.

Chair

Controversy erupted earlier this year when it was confirmed that Larry Murrin's company Dawn Farm Foods sourced 1% of its beef supply from Brazil in 2025.

An independent governance review of the board of Bord Bia has endorsed Murrin, with the "vast majority" of board members "very positive" about his performance as chair.

The review, carried out by Governance Ireland, found no fundamental governance failure but identified weaknesses in board culture, understanding of roles, and governance practices and put forward a list of 22 recommendations to address these.

However, the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) president Francie Gorman, who is a member of the board, said the review, costing over €45,000, "only looked at structures and certain practices - it did not consider the issues that caused this dispute".

The IFA, which staged rolling protests at Bord Bia headquarters for several weeks, had called for the resignation or removal of Murrin as chair of Bord Bia.

Bord Bia

Meanwhile, the annual report also shows that consultancy costs incurred by Bord Bia more than doubled in 2025.

Last year, total consultancy costs for the Irish Food Board stood at over €1.96 million, up from €850,000 in the previous year.

Consultancy costs include the cost of external advice to management and exclude outsourced ‘business as usual’ functions.

Bord Bia's legal costs were recorded as €191,000 in 2025, down from €263,000 in the previous year.

Travel and subsistence expenditure in 2025 was almost €1.6 million, up from nearly €1.4 million in 2024.

Of the overall total, €1.2 million was spend on international travel for Bord Bia employees (2024: €985 million).

€308,000 was spent on domestic travel and subsistence for employees (2024: €344,000), while domestic travel and subsistence for boards was €37,000 (2024: €32,000).

Exports

Under Budget 2025, Bord Bia received an allocation of €59.5 million for 2025.

The value of Irish food and drink exports increased by 10% in 2025 to reach an all-time high of €18.7 billion.

The annual report said that this equates to almost €51 million every day in exports to customers in more than 180 countries worldwide.

The dairy sector, which was worth almost €7.2 billion in 2025 (up 12% on 2024), remained the largest element (40%) within Irish food and drink exports.

This was followed by meat and livestock, which generated around €4.9 billion in export sales, and prepared consumer foods which was worth €3.6 billion.

The UK was the largest single regional destination for Irish food, drink and horticulture with an overall share of 35%.