Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would have to respect Professor Stiglitz, because I sat in his classes at some stage, but I must disagree with him on this issue. For a small trading economy like ours, if we can get the barriers down to conduct trade in ICT products for public procurement contracts in the United States, that is good business. It means a lot of smart companies that have solutions to problems can do business in the United States, Canada or Japan, the latter of which has traditionally been a very closed economy. Since the Korean agreement, there has been a trebling of trade between Europe and South Korea. Real opportunities have been opened up and new jobs have emerged. I have not heard anyone giving out that the agreement with Korea has resulted in any dilution of the protections that the Deputy is concerned about.

In terms of transparency, the Commissioner, Dr. Cecilia Malmström, has been extraordinarily open. After the negotiation sessions, all the documents are made available. There is stakeholder engagement with those who are representative of trade unions, etc., around the documents so that they can give their view. Obviously, some things were redacted because, where there are negotiations going on, as the Deputy will be aware from his business experience, one does not publish the detail of offers on a tariff or whether it is three versus two. Those are matters on which there is a balance to be struck across a range of sectors, and some elements will only be seen towards the end when they are finalised.

I am aware that there are critics of the agreements. The Deputy only reads the comments of critics. He does not read any of the general commentary about what this is about or what it is trying to achieve. He discounts every protection that the Commissioner seeks to put in as being inadequate. I would have to say that the Deputy is coming to this with a fairly closed mind most of the time.

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