Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Penrose for his remarks. Agriculture always has been close to his heart, and I look forward to working with him.

Brexit is an issue of enormous concern for the agriculture sector in particular and is exercising the minds of the whole of Government. While people ask themselves what they can do without being seen to meddle, there are 140,000 people in the State who are entitled to vote in that referendum, and many of us know people in those communities and should reach out to them. When the Mercosur trade agreement did not have an initial offer on beef, people breathed a sigh of relief. However, that achievement would pale into insignificance were the UK to leave the EU and be in a position to negotiate bilateral trade agreements with South America. This is possibly one of the first things the United Kingdom would attempt to do, and the Deputy rightly points out that slightly less than 50% of Ireland's beef exports are on supermarket shelves in the United Kingdom. This encapsulates the scale of the potential crisis we face.

As I stated, this issue is exercising the whole of Government. My Department is feeding into a group within the Department of the Taoiseach that is assessing risks and strategies to deal with this issue. As Deputy McConalogue would be aware, a lot of milk is gathered in Northern Ireland to be brought south of the Border for processing. Given that this milk would now be crossing the border between the UK and the European Union, were Brexit to take place, issues would arise regarding border controls and so on. The Deputy raises an issue of enormous economic concern, a matter of which the Department is acutely aware.

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