Dáil debates

Wednesday, 10 July 2019

EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement: Motion [Private Members]

 

3:35 pm

Photo of Robert TroyRobert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We bore witness yesterday to the Government's laissez-faireattitude to this deal during the question and answer session of statements on the EU-Mercosur trade agreement. Again, people looking on can have little confidence in what this Government will do because the Minister is still unable to say whether we will have a say on the future of this deal. The Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation says it is her understanding that we will but one would imagine that at a very minimum she would know whether we do or we do not. Yesterday, one Minister was saying one thing and another Minister was saying another. The Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation seemed to say it was a fait accompliand the only way we would bring about change is if some of the Mercosur countries failed to comply with standards, yet the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Creed, who was quite rightly under pressure on the quality and quantity of beef that is proposed to come into our market, seemed to suggest that a deal that is 20 years in the making could be changed between now and the deal becoming a legal text. He was unable to confirm to my colleague the details of the cut and quite frankly there is huge uncertainty among the community that is looking on and the Minister has given them no confidence.

It was incredible to find out yesterday that the Government has yet to carry out any meaningful economic assessment on what this deal could mean for our country. The Minister tried to tie it in with an economic assessment that has been ongoing for 12 months on a multitude of trade deals but no economic assessment has been carried out on this specific deal and what impact it will have on the Irish economy. The Minister has confirmed in her speech today that this assessment will only commence now. It should have commenced years ago. A small and open economy like ours relies on our ability to trade. Quite simply, without our ability to trade, we could not survive. We are the second largest exporter in the world of IT software and of baby formula and we are in the top ten exporters in the world of pharmaceuticals. When we are talking about trade, we must ensure that we are trading with countries that adopt the same standards and regulatory environment that we operate in, not with a country that is decimating rainforests. I understand that in the past year alone, there has been a 60% increase in the deforestation of our rainforests, which are critical for our environment and for providing global oxygen.

Government needs to engage with like-minded states to ensure the necessary changes are made before any future consideration can be given to this deal. It needs to carry out an economic assessment to ensure it does not have an adverse impact on our economy as well as carrying out an environmental assessment. If the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation is serious about global trade, she needs to tackle what the National Competitiveness Council called our "high cost economy" earlier this year. She needs to tackle our utilities, our cost of credit and our big business and service inputs and then she will be doing our trading businesses a good service.

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