Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to address this issue and congratulate my colleague, Deputy Crawford, on seeking this debate last week. We do not often have an opportunity in the Chamber to sing from the same hymn sheet in respect of the national interest. There is very little with which I disagree in the objectives the Minister has set out but I have serious reservations about the prosecution of those objectives and how the campaign is being fought. I envy the Minister in terms of the backup resources and advice at her disposal. I am grateful to officials in her Department and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment for their recent briefing. They are a fine bunch of officials and 100% committed to pursuing the optimum objective, the best deal for Ireland. I invite anyone who has not considered this matter in detail to visit the WTO website, to note the impressive jargon and terminology which could almost fill another edition of the Collins English Dictionary.

In my early days in the House in the 1990s the GATT Round and the Uruguay agreement dominated agricultural policy. The Doha Round presents the greatest threat to Irish agriculture since that time and requires great vigilance. World trade agreements are good for our small open trading economy because of their aversion of bilateral agreements. The success of the economy has been largely built on its ability, by virtue of world trade agreements, to attract international or multinational companies to locate here and the explosion in internationally traded services in organisations such as Google. No agreement is preferable to a rushed agreement or one that compromises our single biggest sector, agriculture. We also have an obligation to defend the Common Agricultural Policy in the European Union.

The merry-go-round from Doha to Potsdam to Geneva to Hong Kong and elsewhere presents an alarming spectacle of betrayal of European agriculture and consumers. It concerns internationally traded services, research and development opportunities, patents and so on, which are important for the future. We must, however, keep our eye on the main opportunity, the preservation of Irish agriculture and the Common Agricultural Policy. I do not know where the dynamics are leading. There is a US presidential election coming up, while the current Commission will leave office relatively soon and the term of the Director General, Mr. Lamy, is up. The people in question may be rushing to have this under their belts for inclusion in their CVs. I, therefore, urge the Minister to be extremely vigilant and not party to selling out European and Irish interests.

According to the Commission's statement in Agenda 2000:

The European Model is not the same model as pursued by our major competitors elsewhere. There are many differences between ours and theirs. Seeking to be competitive should not be confused with blindly following the dictates of a market that is far from perfect. The European model is designed to safeguard the earnings of farmers, above all keeping them stable, using the machinery of the market organisations and compensatory payments.

The fundamental difference between the European model and that of our major competitors lies in the multifunctional nature of Europe's agriculture and the part it plays in the economy and the environment, in society and in preserving the landscape.

This involves consumers and environmentalists, as well as farmers. It is all-embracing. This needs to be set at the heart of the defence mechanisms used to protect our interests in the negotiations.

We also need to know where we came from. The raison d'être for the Common Agricultural Policy was that people in Europe were hungry in the 1950s after the Second World War. If the buzzword today is "quality", then it was "quantity". The policy ran aground in the 1980s because boats laden with butter floated off Cork harbour, there were beef mountains and milk lakes. European taxpayers, rightly, reacted against such a development. In the new millennium consumer interests have moved centre stage with the erosion of food surpluses and concern for animal welfare. In the policy consumers and primary producers are now at one. That model is worth preserving.

We must also factor food security into the equation. We are at record low levels of global food inventories from grain to dairy products, which must inform our policy in this regard. The world's population doubled between 1900 and 2000 and is set to increase significantly by 2050, with an annual growth rate of 80 million. This presents a serious challenge to global food security.

There were significant market opportunities in the dairy sector last year because of drought in Australia. This took out one of the major dairy producers in the world and a significant exporting nation. There is increasing frequency of extreme climatic conditions, which affects food production. Water use per capita has multiplied six times since 1900. Challenges include desertification — the Sahara is moving north and south, taking arable land out of production. There is increased urbanisation, particularly in developing countries. China is building six cities the size of Dublin almost every couple of months. There is also increasing consumption, particularly in emerging economies where there is a tendency to move towards western type diets high in protein. Because of the very significant populations there, small percentage increases are leading to substantial increases in demand for food.

There is almost a denial of that reality in the context of those charged by the interests of the Commission — Mr. Mandelson and his team — to negotiate on our behalf. It is interesting that in the course of her speech I do not think the Minister mentioned Mr. Mandelson once by name. It is important to remember where he comes from. He was never a friend of the Common Agricultural Policy, nor was Mr. Blair, but they were very interested in cheap food. His policy could effectively move towards a no-food policy in Europe and a significant escalation of outsourcing. That is a very significant threat. It dovetails with the issues of food miles, carbon footprint and climate change. I do not know if there is a willingness at European level to put those issues centre stage in terms of the ongoing negotiations.

I would prefer to make haste slowly and if there is not going to be an agreement I will not lose sleep about it in the short term. An agreement will be good for us, but it has to be the right one. It has to be borne in mind that whereas Mr. Mandelson might well turn off the tap of European production, it will not be that easy to restart the engine and turn it on again. Once farmers leave the land it will be very difficult to get production turned on again in the quantities which may be needed in the event of global or regional disasters in food production. It is not just a primary producer's interest. It is a matter of concern, too, for consumers and the environment. I do not believe, in the context of the Doha Development Agenda, that it can be left exclusively to Mr. Mandelson.

I come to the issue of how the case is being prosecuted by the Government at EU level. The Minister mentioned in her contribution that there was originally a group of 14 and that now 20 member states are opposed to these developments. That has to reflect a growing frustration at the fact Mr. Mandelson is acting significantly beyond his negotiating brief from the Commission. I want to avoid confrontation with the Minister because our interests in this regard are the same, but simply put, that is a failure at a political level to rein in the Commissioner and to tell him, in effect: "This far and no further shalt thou go". In the interests of improved market access — non-agricultural market access, NAMA, is the jargon used — he should not be allowed to sell out the interests of European agriculture, and at a local level, Irish beef producers in particular, to get a deal. It is the responsibility of the Taoiseach and the Minister to rein in Mr. Mandelson. If 20 member states are so concerned about the Commissioner's activity, then I urge them to act. If necessary let us have a special Intergovernmental Conference where Mr. Mandelson is reined in and a telling message delivered to the Commission.

The danger is that the concessions which the EU made at the start of the 2001 Doha Development Agenda, subsequently CAP reform in 2003, the decoupling arrangements, single farm payments and REPS in particular — issues in the so-called green box — are now considered by Mr. Mandelson to be fair game. The message from Ireland and many other countries that have decoupled should clearly be, "Hands off the green box". These items are not up for discussion. They are not trade distorting in the context of the WTO and the Commissioner must be given that message. Mr. Mandelson also has an opportunity and an obligation to protect and preserve high standards of food production in the European Union. It is galling in the extreme that one can now buy within the European Union that which cannot be produced there.

I come to the issue that has been debated here regularly, Brazilian beef, which is available again here. If Brazilians want access to European markets then, in the context of the WTO, let us have non-trade issues that will ensure their products are produced to a standard European consumers expect and not give them an unfair competitive advantage in putting their products into European supermarkets. That, in essence, is the kernel of the issue.

If we take the chicken and egg situation, we abandoned intensive production of poultry and sold our crates to Thailand and China. Now, by virtue of arrangements facilitated under world trade, over which the European Union has no redress, we have chickens produced to standards we have no control over lying side by side with and competing in supermarkets with Irish and European poultry produced to the highest standards. That is a betrayal of consumer interests as well and needs to be addressed. We face the phasing out of battery egg production here by 2012. The danger is that this business will just migrate eastwards and the eggs will come in from eastern Europe and elsewhere. These are the animal welfare non-trade issues that need to be put centre stage by Mr. Mandelson, alongside food security in order to ensure there is a level playing pitch. I should have thought that was what world trade arrangements were about, by and large — to ensure fair competition. We will compete with anybody, the best in the world in terms of beef or any other sector, if we are given a level playing pitch.

I had a number of other points to elaborate on, particularly in respect of the beef sector, but I am running out of time. Mr. Mandelson needs to be reined in. I read on the website that EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy was meeting this week the Swiss, Norwegian and Kazakhstan delegations. If necessary, the Taoiseach and the Minister need to go to Mr. Barroso as President of the Commission and reissue Mr. Mandelson with his riding instructions in terms of negotiation. Also, at this late stage, they need to talk directly to Mr. Lamy about European concerns. These are Irish concerns too in the broadest context of the world trade talks.

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