Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 24 September 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food

Impact of Trade Deals on Agriculture: Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

2:00 am

Ms Sinéad McPhillips:

The tariff would be lowered for 99,000 tonnes over a six-year period. I could be wrong, and we will check this, but I think at the moment about 200,000 tonnes is coming in in most years from Mercosur countries. Where the 55,000 tonnes comes from is that the economic modelling assumption is that we continue to have 200,000 tonnes coming in and rather than that increasing by 99,000 tonnes, it increases by roughly 53,000 tonnes. In other words, the South American exporters get a benefit from the reduced tariff on the 200,000 tonnes and the increase so they get 253,000 tonnes of total exports rather than 200,000 tonnes.