Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 December 2020

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Impact of Brexit on the Agrifood Industry: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Eddie Punch:

We have made some gains in markets like Germany, for example, where we have gone from 17,000 to 28,000 tonnes of exports since the Brexit vote. We have also increased our market significantly in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. There is some potential to improve our exports to continental Europe and we should not ignore that. I am not saying we are doing that but there is still more potential to grow there. We are still talking about a lot of beef. The Philippines has emerged as a surprising improvement in our markets. The demand for beef in China is going very well. We talked to some Brazilian exporters who are seeing somewhat of a boom in exporting Brazilian beef to China at the moment and there is a slight hope that they will focus on China and keep away from Europe. There is clearly still a lot of opportunity in China and we have to work very hard with the Chinese to get over the temporary little setback in terms of the atypical case. It is still a big challenge. We have gone from exports of just over 500,000 tonnes of beef in 2015 to 560,000 in 2019. That is a significant increase in beef and we are not going to have less beef in the next few years. This is a big challenge for us.