Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)
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I will return to that. I have a number of questions based on the fact that there is considerable concern across Europe. Thousands of people have campaigned against this and there have been public protests and petitions against it. The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs of the European Parliament actually requested that this be rejected. It said that CETA must be decent in terms of "job creation, balanced wage increases and expanding enterprise possibilities. However, regarding decent job creation, empirical evidence based on real-world models indicates at best marginal overall increases for EU employment of no more than 0.018% over a 6 to 10 year implementation period".

Mr. Kelly raised the issue of the beef sector specifically. Given that 5% of Canadian farmers produce 50% of Canada's agricultural output, how are Irish farmers going to compete with hormone injected, capital intensive factory farms housing up to 20,000 animals? That is the major concern that I have been hearing from farming organisations.