Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

After 20 years of negotiating, a provisional trade deal between the EU and the Mercosur countries has supposedly been agreed. The agreement is a bad deal for Ireland and for the planet. There is no two ways about it. As my colleagues said, the deal involves the importation of 90,000 tonnes of beef into each year. A lot more was demanded of the EU. Such imports will cripple the beef industry in Ireland, while simultaneously causing severe climate damage. This deal stands in complete contradiction to the 2030 carbon emissions targets and the Government's climate action plan, which was published recently. The production of the beef to be imported creates a carbon footprint four times the size of the carbon footprint of Irish beef. Additional emissions will be created through transportation of the beef from South America to Europe.

The Government must reject this deal now. I have heard Ministers suggesting that the deal will somehow cause Mercosur countries to improve their environmental protections. Their attitude to the concerns that have been expressed by Sinn Féin is that we always oppose trade deals. We make no apologies for opposing trade deals that have negative effects on Ireland. We have been proven correct in our opposition to many of the trade deals that have been entered into by this Government and its predecessors. Over the years, we have pointed out Israel's clear violations of the provisions in the EU-Israel free trade agreement that relate to the protection of human rights, and indeed its war crimes, but nothing has happened. The EU-Israel agreement is violated each day without any repercussions. We have made similar complaints about the EU-Colombia free trade agreement. We warned that it would lead to a deterioration in human rights and we expressed concern that the human rights provisions in the agreement were not strong enough. Unfortunately, we have been proven to be correct in that case as well.

The Government wants us to sign up to an agreement with a far-right Brazilian President who glorifies the old military dictatorship in Brazil. Since his election, he has shown complete disdain for human rights, environmental protection and the rule of law. His Government has failed to demarcate land to indigenous communities adequately. This has led to significant land grabs by Brazilian agribusiness. This, in turn, is leading to the destruction of these indigenous communities and the environment, as well as to the assassination of community leaders who resist.

These actions will increase significantly if this deal is ratified.

The Brazilian President has stated that he plans to assimilate Brazil’s 800,000 indigenous people into Brazilian society stating that they currently live like animals in a zoo. He plans to remove them from their ancestral land and land reserved for indigenous communities in order to hand it over to commercial agriculture and mining. We should not sign a trade agreement with a country whose president calls its indigenous people "animals" and who is committed to environmental destruction. We should not sign any trade agreement that is going to devastate an Irish industry, as this will devastate our beef industry, in the same way as the EU has already done with our fishing industry. The Government must reject this agreement and ensure it is never ratified.

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