Mr. Eddie Punch:

I thank the Chairman for the invitation and Deputy Carthy for the questions. To answer the first one on whether Bord Bia is doing enough, it is impossible to say what enough is at the moment. Since Brexit there has been some improvement in diversifying our exports into other markets. Much effort was put, predominantly of course, into China but China has been disrupted in the past year because of its difficulty with animal disease. That has been problematic.

Our export of beef to continental Europe has improved. We have gained in volume in much of the European continental markets, so we have gone up in exports. In 2015 before Brexit our exports to the Continent were around 219,000 tonnes of beef while in 2019 that was up to 253,000 tonnes. There has been an improvement in terms of France, Netherlands, Scandinavia and Germany. That is positive but these amounts are in the tens of thousands while 260,000 tonnes of beef went to the UK in 2019. Clearly, we have not achieved enough diversification to date. It is obviously very hard to see how we can find a market for even half of the beef if, for example, half of the beef to the UK had to be diverted.

We welcome that there was an agreement for the development for a suckler brand in the beef task force and we would hope the money there will be used. We have a concern that the meat industry and some of the main processors are not showing all that much enthusiasm in trying to develop suckler beef as a premium product.

Our view is that the suckler brand needs to be managed and owned by farm organisations, farmers and small companies as much as by Bord Bia or big business. Similar remarks can be made about the PGI grass-fed standard. We want to make sure that is controlled for the benefit of the primary producer in this country. PGIs are meant to benefit primary producers. That is set out in EU legislation but let us see what will happen on that.

The Deputy mentioned the Mercosur and CETA agreements. The CETA deal like the Mercosur deal is one in which beef was sacrificed for the benefit of other sectors. The only thing that can be said about CETA is that Canada has not been aggressive about taking up the quota under the agreement but we would have a concern that the agreement does not work for beef producers. Overall, it is time to very much reflect on whether these trade deals which were done when there was no thought about Brexit are still appropriate. Under the Mercosur agreement, there is the potential for 99,000 tonnes of beef to be brought into the European market. That was entirely the wrong deal at the wrong time. It was initiated when the gap in the market that could be used to justify it was the fact that the UK was short of beef. If the UK is out of the European Union, there is no justification for bringing in additional beef to disrupt an already chaotic market. We have to say it is a chaotic market if beef we would normally export to the UK without the imposition of tariffs is now struggling to find a home but if tariffs that could be imposed on exports to the UK cause a disruption to that market we cannot afford to be bringing in beef from outside the EU. The logistics disruption through the landbridge is posing a big problem regardless of whether we will have a deal. Some additional ferry capacity was announced in recent months by Stena Line and so on but there is not anywhere near enough ferry capacity to mitigate the disruption to the landbridge. In our view there needs to be a serious discussion at EU level about subsidising additional ferry capacity direct from Ireland to Europe.