Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

They are all relevant points. There are issues around products that we could, and should, still export to Russia, which are not covered by its embargo, as they call it, or ban. For example, even though milk powders are banned, dairy ingredients products and casein are not banned. There are similar issues for other sectors. However, further restrictions apply to Ireland because of inspections that happened here and, therefore, we are trying to resolve these to make sure questions the Russian authorities have following those inspections a number of months ago are dealt with. That is what I met the Russian ambassador about last week and we had a constructive discussion.

With regard to supports for companies and sectors that have specific problem, Bord Bia put in place a unit to deal with companies that have an over-reliance on the Russian market to look for alternative markets for them, and it has been active in that area. The mackerel industry springs to mind. Ireland is Europe's second largest exporter of mackerel to Russia. We have had to look at helping the industry to find other markets. I was in China last week and I noted that significant volumes of mackerel go through China to the Japanese market. We are trying to target and help companies that have an exposure to the Russian market and that are adversely affected by this issue. We are putting as much pressure as we can on the Commissioner and the Commission to ensure we have a sufficient budget to deal with this continuing problem, which is the result of a foreign policy decision as opposed to an agricultural decision. This should go beyond the agricultural budget in terms of the compensation and the solution.

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