Mr. Maroš Šefovi:

Thank you very much. I thank the Deputy from Kilkenny. I apologise for not knowing his name but unfortunately I do not have the members' names in front of me. Of course we know how important agriculture is for Ireland. It is very active in talking, and not only to us. The presence of Irish farmers' representatives and associations in COPA-COGECA and all across the board is very visible. I am sure they would confirm that I meet them quite often.

A total of €20 billion of agrifood exports for Ireland is a remarkable success and I have no doubt that it will continue because the agreements we are putting on the table are opening a new level of the market access for Ireland's farmers. If we look at Mexico, it is a huge country which is one of the biggest net agrifood importers. I just signed the deal with Indonesia a week ago. It is the biggest Muslim country of almost 300 million people. Again, it is a net importer. We also managed to squeeze in a very important tariff-like quota for wines and spirits. When I am in the United Arab Emirates and having my meetings, I look in the shops and they are full of Irish products. Ireland is very much present there. We are working very hard on India where the agriculture sector is super-sensitive because they are very protective of their sectors. We are looking for ways of how to open it for our exports.

To provide more details on this guarantee, once again I will try to explain the mechanics. There is an agreement and then there is our internal legal Act which is called a regulation, because you cannot have more binding legal Acts than the regulation in the European Union. It very clearly sets the framework for how this safeguard chapter of the Mercosur agreement would be applied. This means in practice we have to do this regular permanent monitoring where, every six months, we have to report the developments in the import-export of agrifood products with Mercosur. Let us talk about Ireland. If there is a 10% increase from the previous period in these sensitive commodities or if there is a 10% decrease in price because of the situation in the market, then the process of imposing the safeguards is automatically triggered. I reassure the members we will not be playing for time. We will act properly. This regulation has very clear timelines. We have to respond to such a finding with five days and we have to propose the measures and implement them within 21 days which, I would say, is the speed of light in any administration, I hope the members would agree. Once the safeguards are imposed, they are there. The safeguards are that we can limit or block the imports and then they are in place for four years. That is the legal guarantee.

On the guarantee on standards, I totally agree that, once the beef is here and there is a doubt, then it is too late. That was the point which was made. Therefore we will increase to the maximum our checks in Brazil and Argentina on the farm and in slaughterhouses to make sure there is no hormone beef and all the standards are fully respected, and our partners agree with that. Members will have access to this finding because that is our common goal. On top of that, the goods coming to Ireland will also be checked by Irish authorities when they come here. There is also an initiative from different farmers’ unions that we have to set up a very close network between the most important ports which bring the goods into Europe to be particularly specialised on agrifood products to be well equipped to do the controls. We, as the European Union, will do regular audits on whether this control system is working and performing. We will do sample testing in laboratories to make sure everything is complied with concerning standards. If we find something is wrong, our rapid alert system, which I am sure the Deputy is familiar with, will be triggered and the exports will be simply banned.

There are additional elements and measures on how we monitor, on top of hormones, the use of antibiotics and everything else which was raised by the farmers’ representatives in Brussels. We will insist on a reciprocal standards to be mutually respected. There is all this plus a limited quota, which I will describe. If we are talking about real meat without bones, we are talking about 72,000, and if we are talking about prime Hilton Quota beef, it is about 50,000 tonnes, which compared with the European consumption and production are really small numbers. In exchange for that we are opening the biggest market for us. It would a trade agreement that is four times bigger than that with Japan. There are all these astronomical tariffs going to zero.

One last thing on Mercosur I forgot to mention is the 99,000 tonnes is the final number after seven years. The Deputy will see what is happening over the seven years and how this quota is being used. All this was done to reassure people. We will be very happy to work with Peter Power and the delegations to provide the Deputy with more technical details if needed. The Chair is signalling for me to stop and I am over time. He was very gentle with my use of time.

If I did not respond to the Senator, I will do it in the next round if I can.