Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is important that we have markets for our businesses. I believe the local enterprise offices, LEO, are doing work with the SMEs, which are good, in helping them to get ready for export. It is really good that we export goods that Canada needs and that we import stuff from Canada that we cannot provide ourselves. I hope we are also looking at making ourselves more sustainable as a country in order that we only import what we cannot produce.

During Brexit, we obtained lots of good information on the number of potatoes, for example, we are importing from England. Sometimes we get garlic and such from China. I hope we move forward as a Government with the focus on making sure we can produce all we can in our country, on looking at our food miles and our carbon footprint, and, of course, at the great potential for creating jobs. We can get many more jobs on the land around food production than just dairy or beef. I hope we are also considering those issues within all these trade agreements.