Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I advise the Deputy not to lose sight of the fact that the UK is a food importer. The UK cannot feed itself. Ireland is the closest market to the UK. We have modelled every possible scenario in the context of Brexit. We send more than 50% of our beef exports, or 253,000 tonnes, to the UK. The WTO can impose tariffs of 50% on beef. I suspect that the events of recent days have damaged that possibility. If the UK decides in a post-Brexit scenario that it wishes to import beef from Mercosur countries, that might significantly displace much of our beef. If there is a level playing pitch in areas like animal welfare standards, veterinary certification and veterinary standards, we can compete with most countries. However, we cannot compete with beef from South America if the systems of production and the animal welfare standards are different.