Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA, was signed by the EU and Canada on 30 October. CETA will be referred to national parliaments and the European Parliament for ratification. This week, the European Commission has published its report on the cumulative effects of trade agreements. The fact is that these agreements are not good for agriculture across Europe or for agriculture in Ireland. CETA is part of a new generation of free trade agreements, along with TTIP and others, which move far beyond the lowering of tariffs and the free movement of goods. In fact, they look to attack the sovereignty of national parliaments by interfering in national regulations of trade. CETA was negotiated entirely in secret. The proposed text was not made public until the draft had been finalised in September 2014.

Many non-governmental organisations, civil society and consumer groups have expressed grave concerns about the very weak protections in CETA for the environment, workers' rights, public health, food safety, public procurement and the impact of the investment court system litigation on these very standards and on the democratic process. The Irish beef farming sector is particularly vulnerable to the effects of CETA, which will include the influx of 50,000 tonnes of cheap Canadian beef and 75,000 tonnes of pork entering the EU market. The impact of this influx on Irish beef producers will be exacerbated as a result of the Brexit vote, due to the fact that Britain has been the largest importer of Canadian agri-produce into the EU. There has been no revision of the quotas in response to the Brexit vote.

The inclusion of the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism in these agreements, whereby foreign corporations will be able to sue national governments for compensation for loss of expected future profits in response to governments' actions for the common good, has provoked widespread public opposition to the ratification of these agreements on both sides of the Atlantic. In the Seanad recently, there was a motion on CETA and it was roundly rejected. Sinn Féin has a motion on CETA on today's Order Paper. In these circumstances, how can the Minister justify his Government's continued support for CETA and will he instruct his people in the European Parliament to reject this agreement? When this agreement comes before this Dáil, will the Government reject?

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