Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)
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The Commissioner is very welcome. I take this opportunity to congratulate him and thank him for the trade deal he did with America at 15%. That deal gets a bad press in the media, but it has been proven in recent weeks with the pharmaceutical industry being tied in at 15%. That was what saved it. It would be remiss of us not to mention it. The most-favoured nation tariffs on many products were larger than 15%. It looked like we would have to pay a lot more. The Commissioner deserves to be thanked, congratulated and complimented on the deal. President von der Leyen signed off on the deal in Scotland, but the Commissioner did a lot of negotiating behind the scenes. I want to thank him for that.

I know the negotiations are still going on. I am from a small village called Kilbeggan, where Kilbeggan Whiskey is produced. I am still hopeful that the Commissioner can carve out a 0% tariff for spirits. That is vitally important for this country. Is the Commissioner in a position to update us on those negotiations? It was the American Administration that initiated this whole process. We wish there were no tariffs at all. It was important that Europe did not have a knee-jerk, tit-for-tat reaction that involved imposing a tariff on American product coming in here, as an eye for an eye. That would eventually have been paid by the consumer. Many people were asking for that and it took strength not to take that reciprocal action. Again I congratulate the Commissioner on that.

The Mercosur deal has been covered. There is a major issue with equivalence of standards, and not just with beef from Mercosur countries. We were told yesterday that at the moment - before the Mercosur deal - 1 million tonnes of genetically modified grain and animal feedstuffs are coming into this country from Mercosur countries. We cannot or will not produce genetically modified product. We need to look at equivalence of standards across all imports into the EU, and not just in this one trade deal. It is happening already. This trade deal might help to highlight it but it is happening already and needs to be looked at.

The Commissioner spoke about veterinary inspections on the meat coming in. A vet inspecting a carcass will not tell you where or how it was produced. They cannot tell by looking at a carcass whether it was raised in flattened rainforest land, for example, or whether it was hormone treated. The inspections need to be on the other side. They need to be on the farms at the point of production.