Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Quite a number of questions have been asked. In respect of the car industry, it is probably an area in which Europe is looking to opportunities in the United States market rather than losing out. It is an area in which it is stated that we have an offensive interest and in which there are opportunities. However, guarantees have been built into the Japanese or Korean agreements, for example, to prevent the flooding of product as raised by the Chairman. In general, protections and safeguards are built into sensitive sectors such as the automobile sector and this has been a feature of the existing trade agreements.
On the public procurement rules, it is an issue that will be quite difficult in the United States, which I suppose is why it is not in the first round, because the United States has different procurement rules in different states within the federation. Consequently, local rules apply and this is an area in which we obviously are seeking to get mutual reduction in barriers in order that US companies could trade in Europe and vice versa. A fully open tender system is in operation within the European Union and consequently, one cannot discriminate. Above a certain standard, there must be an open, published tender and one cannot apply discriminatory rules to favour one side or another although, as members are aware, one can have social clauses that might unemployed people, apprentices or whatever. It is unlikely that such a level of openness will be reached in a negotiation of this nature. However, one would be hoping to bring down barriers in order to enable people to have opportunities in this regard. I refer in particular to Irish companies that have won interesting software applications in public procurement contracts within the European Union and elsewhere and one would hope similar benefits could be achieved by seeing a reduction in barriers in the US. There would be some cases in which there would be a "buy American only" policy or whatever and clearly, it is in our interests to bring down barriers on both sides. On that issue of the state versus the federation, it arose in the Canadian agreement and was an issue that took longer to unravel, that is, to get all the provinces within Canada to sign up to a set of common rules.
Deputy Eric Byrne raised the issue of how does one measure the benefits. Obviously, economic models are used and while one always can criticise the assumptions that are made, these models consider the level of trade barriers and evaluate tariffs. In the case of tariffs, they are not very high and I believe they are at a maximum of approximately 3%. However, non-trade barriers can be very high and can be up to 20% in some sectors. The models evaluate how big are the barriers, examine how trade flows could change as a result of that and then ascertain what are the benefits. As the Deputy noted, assessments have been carried out at EU-wide level but as I stated in my remarks, this is why the Government has commissioned some work to drill down to the Irish situation to conduct an evaluation of the impact in Ireland. In general, the Government envisages bigger gains comparatively for Ireland because we have fairly strong trading relationships with the United States and there would be opportunities for Ireland on foot of a reduction in barriers. We have the familiarity of trading in the United States, a common language and a lot of already-built common trading relationships. Therefore, one would hope to see better opportunities coming for Ireland.
The approach being taken by the European Union to public policy standards is to have no diminution of existing public policy standards. This is not an issue of the European Union seeking to negotiate away any public protection that it has put in place but is to maintain standards. I must revert to the joint committee on the extent to which Irish standards differ from European Union standards. In general, EU recognition is what a medical device or pharmaceutical company seeks to achieve because it can then trade throughout the European Union. Obviously, we seek to protect both sets of standards. The United States will seek to protect whatever is its public policy in the same way as we in the European Union will seek to protect ours. It may be easier to see this point in respect of the food sector, where the European Union has total bans on hormones and a fixed policy on GM that it does not intend to change in any way.