Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will focus my comments on the agrifood sector. The Minister of State, Deputy Breen, spoke about our preparations for these negotiations which are in their infancy, if not embryonic. As the former president of a farming organisation, my experience of EU negotiations is that concessions are only made in the final hours. That, however, is when we, as a country, will be at our most vulnerable.

We are by far the most dependent on access to the UK market. Just the other day, a major UK retailer said it was not going to stock Irish beef any more. This circling-the-wagons mentality by UK retailers and farmers has not even entered the equation yet or been considered.

As Deputy Aylward said, the beef sector is a hugely important market for us. Some 50% of our beef finds its way onto UK shelves. It is a high value market for us, as well as being the highest value beef market in the world. We have not yet done the preparatory work to try to find replacement outlets for our beef.

This year has seen an increase in Bord Bia's budget of €2 million. With the challenges that organisation is facing in trying to get alternative markets for our products, that figure does not show enough commitment from the Government in preparing the ground work necessary to cope with the consequences of Brexit for us.

The British Prime Minister has said that no deal is better than a bad deal, but the reality is that the clock is ticking. If we come to the end of negotiations and there is no deal we will be on WTO tariffs which would put a levy of 16 cent per litre on dairy products going into the UK market.

Ornua, which is our major dairy marketing body, has huge business interests in the UK and is largely intertwined in that market. Some 80% of our cheddar finds its way onto UK shelves as a unique product for the UK market. We would have no alternative market for that cheese product.

There has not been much focus on the high standards that the EU Commission demands of our food producers. If the UK is operating outside the Single Market it will not be under the same restrictions. Not so many years ago we had a foot and mouth scare in this country, so what controls can the EU have on UK imports post-Brexit? We have been fighting for a generation to stop third country beef imports coming into the EU. Farmers in those countries operate on completely different standards to those within the EU. That can pose dangers for food production on this island.

The mushroom sector was the first casualty of the Brexit vote when sterling fluctuated. It had a negative effect on our mushroom business. Two mushroom growers in County Tipperary went out of business quickly after the British vote last year. Therefore, the challenges facing the agrifood industry are immense, yet we can only see the tip of the iceberg so far. To date, the Government's preparation has been inadequate. Nothing illustrates it more so than the budgetary allocation for An Bord Bia for the current calendar year.

Our dependency on cross-Border trade is illustrated by the fact that 300,000 litres of milk per day come into the Twenty-six Counties from Northern Ireland to be processed. All such matters will be major issues in the Brexit negotiations. The challenges are huge but as of now our preparations are not adequate to ensure that the agrifood sector can come out of the Brexit negotiations in an economically viable state.

See this speech in context