Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their presentation. I want to broaden it to the strategic. As I understand it, the 2020 guarantee is not very significant. The CAP is coming up for review in 2020. We are now in 2017 and Article 50 has been triggered, which will bring us up to 2019. The 2020 horizon will be on us very soon. The real question is what is Britain's policy on agriculture and food thereafter. Is it the view of the Ulster Farmers Union that the UK will pursue a low-cost agricultural system from now on? If the UK as an economy is pursuing low-cost food prices and unsubsidised agriculture then given the prevalence of world prices, it clearly has very strong implications as to what can be done on an all-Ireland basis, especially if Europe is going in one direction under a revised CAP and the UK is going towards a cheap food policy, with imports from South America and New Zealand.

Secondly, in that context, I can see from the Ulster Farmers Union charts that the United Kingdom is a net importer of food. Therefore if it is isolated as a unit, there were tariffs and there was an expanding market at current prices, it feeds into the first question. If Britain regards itself as free to pursue a cheap food policy, can Northern Ireland agriculture go along with this? Can it benefit from it?

The farmers' union members, like us all, are looking in a crystal ball, but what are their views? Westminster seems to have been engaged in a decade long series of public expenditure cuts. Do they see it taking over the process of subsidising agriculture beyond 2020 at current levels? I would be interested to know where Mr. Bell sees Ulster farmers interests being protected and how that would be done in terms of the UK strategy.