Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

-----and, as I said, in the course of the last five years. We have urged Government to stand by farming families and rural Ireland and, also, to stand by that which is sustainable and sensible and things that protect our planet rather than underscoring wholesale vandalism in the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. It is laughable to hear the Minister try to explain away the destruction of the rainforest with verbiage around Paris commitments. The Paris commitments count for nothing insofar as the current Brazilian Administration is concerned, and well the Minister knows it.

The Government is going into this agreement with its eyes wide open. It knows that for the beef sector in particular, but also the poultry and pigmeat sectors, this deal is really bad news. It knows that, coupled with Brexit and the fall in beef prices, it is potentially calamitous. The Government has to know, because it has to have some level of common sense, that it is not a good thing to import Brazilian beef instead of supporting the production, sale and consumption of Irish traceable beef in Ireland.

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