Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the officials this evening. I want to be associated with the congratulations to Ms McPhillips. I wish her the best of luck going forward and look forward to working with her.

It is likely that Mercosur will dominate proceedings here this evening. I will start there also. I am not opposed to Mercosur. I am not opposed to any trade deal. We are an open economy and Ms McPhillips rightly said how much we need to do free trade with as many people as possible. However, I am also a beef farmer and I have problems with the beef sector of the Mercosur agreement. I have more of a problem with the standards to which beef is produced than I have with anything else. We have to have an equivalence of standards. I would like to hear Ms McPhillips's comment on that. Can Ms McPhillips give us an indication, because we all get carried away on the beef side, of what the Mercosur deal might be worth to our agriculture sector, aside from beef? There are massive positives for our dairy sector. Our spirits sector, as she mentioned, might struggle in America with a 15% tariff. There is a massive opportunity there which would in turn be a benefit to our tillage sector in the production of malt, barley, etc. Has Ms McPhillips any idea of what Mercosur might be worth, on the positive side, to the other sectors? Will she also comment on the equivalence of standards of production of beef to give us a better idea of that? In doing so, she might give us an indication as to what the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA, is worth to agriculture. It had the same objections. I do not want to use the word "scare-mongering" but, because I cannot think of an equivalent, I will use it to explain what I mean. At the time, CETA was not acceptable at all. What is it worth to us now, having been accepted? Is there any progress on a carve-out for the spirits? I am from Kilbeggan, the home of Kilbeggan whiskey, so I have a keen interest in the American tariffs on whiskey. Is there any progress or update on the potential carve-out of spirits to a zero tariff?