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

I would first like to take the opportunity to congratulate the Minister of State and, in particular, the EI staff in the field who work in Canada and many other places. They have been extraordinary in supporting companies to enter new markets that often have practices they would not be familiar with. They need pathfinders and Enterprise Ireland has been superb at that.

There are a couple of questions in which I am interested. I know Canada continues to have a fair amount of protection around its food and drink sector. I am interested in how successful expansion in the food and drink area has been. As far as I recall, this sector would not be thrown completely open.

My second question relates to the trade figures, which stand out like a sore thumb. While, as the Minister of State will know, Ireland has nearly quadrupled its trade and grew by 31% in this year to date, until this year Canada showed no growth in its trade. Therefore, the balance of trade between the two countries has moved dramatically in favour of Ireland compared to Canada. What is the political mood in Canada around the success of the trade agreement with Europe? More recently, last year, there was a 39% growth in Canada’s trade into Ireland. Is that a sign that there is a pick-up?

I would like to make another comment. I heard what other members said about the investor protection agreement. It is worth saying that the withdrawal from the energy treaty is for completely different reasons to the industry dispute settlement arrangement. It is to do with the fact that that treaty does not recognise the Green Deal and the drive towards net zero. It is for that reason we are withdrawing from the energy treaty. It is not because of the dispute mechanism.

I have a second comment about the dispute mechanism. There may be a situation where a country like Ireland sends a small business and it is in a complicated state. Canada has laws that are much like our own, so it is not a good example of that. Yet, it has multiple provinces. If you find that you have been discriminated against, the advantage of the dispute settlement is that you can go to one point instead of having to pursue your case in multiple different jurisdictions within a country like Canada. It is particularly important in countries that do not have a tradition of settled courts to protect an Irish investor who goes into a country that there is the option of having a dispute settlement. To be fair to the EU, it has bent over backwards to ensure that the approach in the Canadian deal is not like the many criticised approaches that were in place in years gone by. There were other deals, and this is a very different version.

Many of the cases that were quoted are in respect of old treaties. I do not hold the view that we need to be worried about ratifying, with a modern democracy like Canada, a trade agreement that includes an investor dispute settlement arrangement under the sort of judicial oversight that was put in place in the trade agreement with Canada. I just make that point. While I respect Deputy Shanahan in raising this, I do not share the view that this is a big worry for us in any sense. Canada has a settled, good trading arrangement and is a good partner to deal with. Can the Minister of State address the questions?