Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am glad that Deputy Cahill raised this. He has a lot of credibility on this area. It is a real problem. I do not want to pretend it will be solved easily. About 900 million litres of milk comes south from Northern Ireland farms to be processed. Lakeland Dairies is probably the best example of a processor which has a very significant percentage of its milk pool coming from the North, but Glanbia and others do too. The challenge is that one can sell milk that has been sourced on a Northern Ireland farm across the EU as if it is produced in the EU, but if one is selling a product that has been processed with that milk pool from Northern Ireland to a third country that is subject to a trade agreement that the EU has put in place, that milk is sourced outside the EU, even though it is at equivalent to EU standard, under country of origin rules. It is seen as UK milk rather than Irish or EU milk. As a result, there is a problem with EU trade agreements in different parts of the world and selling Northern Ireland milk as EU milk.

The only way to change that is by changing the trade agreements to insert an asterisk to say "EU and Northern Ireland products" which is something we would like to do. I have campaigned for that with the European Commission, with Michel Barnier and his task force and with Maroš Šefcovic, who will be a key figure in EU-UK relations. We will continue to do that but it will take time and a lot of goodwill on the EU side to be willing to do that. It does pose difficulties in the meantime, but there is a huge market across the EU, where milk from Northern Ireland will be treated the exact same as EU milk. It is only because of the technical legalities of trade agreements, and the country of origin element to those agreements around accurate labelling, that the protocol on Northern Ireland does not cater for products like that. Milk is the best example. The problem is that Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland milk is all mixed into the one milk pool and separating those two milk pools, depending on the markets into which they are sold, is costly for processors. We will continue to engage and work with the processing sector, which is a hugely important part of Irish agriculture, to try and find solutions on this where possible.

See this speech in context