Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Green Party is happy to support this Sinn Féin motion. My 75 colleagues in the European Parliament intend to vote against this deal when it is presented. That will be critical because every vote is going to count. The question for parties here is not only how we think in this Chamber but what their colleagues in the European Parliament are going to do.

The Green Party is going to vote against the Mercosur agreement in Europe because we think the standards that are being put in place cannot be enforced. There is no real enforcement mechanism on the environmental and labour standards that are cited by the parties supporting this agreement.

One cannot ignore the fact that the Government in Brazil is a threat to the local, indigenous people and to the Amazon in a way that is a threat to us all. The European Union is talking about preserving certain values, principles and standards in global trade and I cannot see how the EU can do a deal under which those considerations are dispatched. How can we do a deal when the Brazilian Government is fundamentally opposed to the values we represent?

This is a critical moment in time. As Deputy Harty said, there is a real prospect that, if a no-deal Brexit occurs, our farming community will be in havoc and facing a real crisis, beyond anything comparable in this country for a long time. Mercosur presents a similar threat to that posed by Brexit but it should be a signal for us to change our ways and that the current model of how we pay and support Irish farm families is not working and needs to change. We have an opportunity to do this under the new Common Agricultural Policy, CAP. We in the Green Party have been saying we should pay our farmers properly for protecting biodiversity at home. It is not just the Amazon we need to look after. We have our own equivalent here in the peat bogs we have let go and lost.

We must pay our farmers for being scientific and expert in restoring pristine water quality. I understand that is allowed for in the new CAP rules. Let us pay our farmers properly for training a whole new generation of young farmers. The current system is not serving Irish farming. The average age for a beef farmer is 57 and rising. Before those men and women retire, let us pay them properly for training a whole new generation of young people into Irish farming who have expertise on how we manage and use our land. What the environmental movement needs more than anything is farmers with real skill and knowledge of local land conditions. We should also pay them for storing carbon.

Perhaps most importantly, we must pay farmers a proper price for high quality food. We are currently trading on an Origin Green brand and getting a commodity price on the international markets. That is a fact and the core of the problem.

We produce high quality food which, as Deputy Danny Healy-Rae said, is tagged and well husbanded compared to other parts of the world. We should be getting a premium for that and we are not. We should start at home by developing local, indigenous markets where there is a better connection between the consumer and the farmer and it is not always the retailer and processor who make all the money.

We have been saying this for years. I am so glad, in listening to the debate in recent days and hearing the same arguments come from other sides of the House, that we are taking climate change seriously. We cannot ignore the destruction of rainforests. We must start breaking down the power imbalances in Irish agriculture with certain companies. Anglo Beef Processors stands out, as it is a Luxembourg, rather than an Irish, registered company. It pays 0.03% in tax on its corporate profits, while the average beef farmer earns €13,000 or less. This is a wake-up call for Irish agriculture. It is not just about the Mercosur deal or the threat from imported beef products from Brazil; it is also about waking up to the threat from the current model being pursued by the Government. It not food wise but food stupid and it is time to change.

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