Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Sinn Féin has tabled this motion because it believes the EU-Mercosur trade deal is bad for Ireland, farmers and the environment. We want the Government to stand up for Irish interests and reject this disastrous trade deal. We cannot stand over a trade deal which undermines completely Ireland's climate change targets and the Paris Agreement. We cannot support a deal which requires and facilitates the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. We cannot support a deal that sells out Irish beef farmers and accelerates a race to the bottom in the beef industry on beef quality and workers' rights. The beef sector is an industry of which we should be proud, but the Government seems steadfast in making life as difficult as possible for those who work in it.

4 o’clock

The beef sector now faces three significant threats to its existence. The first threat is the Government's Mercosur deal, which has been agreed by Commissioner Phil Hogan. The second is Brexit, the impact of which can already be seen in our exchanges with Britain. The third is the substantial margins being taken by factories and producers. Very little is being left for farmers, as the primary producers, and for those who work on farms.

If the Government lets the Mercosur deal go ahead, it will be the final nail in the coffin of the beef sector. The deal, which is a threat to farmers, will expose the Irish public to a product that may be dangerous because it is produced using chemicals and hormones which are banned in the EU. Brazilian farmers will be able to undercut Irish beef farmers with their products because the quality of Brazilian beef production standards is well below what is required here and across the EU. Perhaps the most alarming aspect of this matter is that unlike in Ireland, where every single animal is tagged, Brazil has little or no traceability. This is a great concern.

The Government is asking the House to support the Mercosur deal in the full knowledge that the President of Brazil has made no secret of his frightening plans to oversee the continuing rapid deforestation of the Amazon and has set out his desire to remove Brazil from the Paris climate change accord. The deforestation of the Amazon, which is now at its highest rate in a decade, increased by 13% last year. Last month alone, an volume of rainforest the size of two football pitches was being cleared every minute. It is no coincidence, and no surprise to anyone, that deforestation in Brazil has been increasing considerably at the same time that it has become the biggest exporter of beef in the world.

How does the Mercosur deal fit in with Ireland's climate action commitments? We declared a climate emergency in this House two months ago. The Government published its climate action plan last month. Given that Ireland and the EU are more than self-sufficient in beef, can the Minister explain the logic behind the carbon-mile footprint that will be required to ship this beef from South America to Europe?

We all know that none of this makes sense from a climate perspective or from the perspective of Irish farmers. To put it plainly and simply, this bad deal trades the Amazon and Irish farmers for cheap beefburgers. Over recent days, Ministers have been saying that this deal has been 20 years in the making and that it will be a long time before anything happens. It seems that Commissioner Hogan does not agree with them because he told the Irish Farmers' Journallast week that if the circumstances are right, we could have a deal "quite soon". I call on the House to reject the Fine Gael amendment, support our motion and reject the Mercosur trade deal.

See this speech in context