Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If they do not get information by way of questions here they go off on their own tangents and raise their own issues. I make the point to Deputies Higgins and Boyd Barrett that the question of the EU-US trade agreement is one for approval for a mandate to negotiate only. While the US, as they say, or other countries, might wish to have access to particular markets that does not mean that they will achieve those. Are they to condemn the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine who went last year to the United States specifically to negotiate for the possibility of entry of Irish beef to the US market? Do they condemn that? That is being done outside the potential of the EU-US market. Maybe they do condemn that. Maybe they do not want people who work in the farm business and food sector here to have that opportunity. They cannot have it both ways. The issue of GMOs and hormones in beef is one that will raise complications for countries on either side, for us as well as others but we are negotiating to get approval for the mandate to start the negotiations. That does not mean, as Deputy Higgins well knows, that what people want would be approved or agreed in the end. I suggest to him and to Deputy Boyd Barrett that they go around the country to the multinationals and talk to the men and women who work in them and ask them about their conditions and their pay and the opportunities given to them to work in companies that are globally recognised as being exceptionally competent and see whether the conditions measure up.

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