Joanne Collins (Sinn Fein)

I thank the officials for giving of their time to be here. We have gone around the floor and these questions have probably been asked and answered already, but I will try to ask them in a different format to make it more interesting.

I am going to touch on the standards side of this, which has been asked about plenty of times. Our farmers pride themselves on the standard of our beef. We are world-renowned for the standards we have. Ms McPhillips is saying that, within the agreement, the EU is looking to have some type of standards for the Mercosur countries. If they are not to the same standards as what we have to export to, then what is stopping Irish farmers from decreasing our standards in protest if the Mercosur countries can do it more cheaply? I mean the likes of injecting hormones into livestock in Mercosur countries, which we cannot do here because it is not allowed under EU regulations. It takes the fairness out of the deal and the trade, so it does not turn out to be a fair trade.

The other side I wish to touch on, which colleagues across the floor have spoken about, is the environmental impact. We have a plant in Edenderry that used to be fuelled by Bord na Móna peat. Bord na Móna had to be shut down because of our emissions, so we now ship the rainforest into Shannon Foynes Port, which takes 52 days, shunt it up and down a pier with trucks and cranes, and then take it up to Edenderry by truck again. Think of the emissions of that alone. I do not know if the Department, or whichever body needs to, has ever done a study on that, but surely that is not cutting emissions. Emissions are emissions regardless of what country they come from. As my colleague said, we all have the same sky. What is the point of us bending over backwards to cut our emissions if we are going to incentivise another country to cut down a rainforest so we can hit net zero, or try to hit it, when that country is going to create huge emissions?

This does not seem to make sense on the environmental or standards side. What if I was at the end of line where I was selling our cattle for beef and I was depending on that price yet I knew that another farmer doing the exact same thing on the other side of the world was selling into the same market but did not have to go through the same cost? Do not get me wrong - the farmers in this country are willing to do it because we have such good-quality produce, but if it is costing us one thing and costing other countries something else, then it is not very fair. There is going to be a kick back somewhere along the line. The population is going to suffer because the beef is not going to be as good. That is going to be an awful shame because we have such a good name for our beef.