Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I too welcome this debate and the opportunity to speak. The stakes are very high, as mentioned earlier. We now have some more clarity on President Trump’s announcements. He is upending decades of international trade norms and relationships in a matter of weeks. That is extremely serious. For Ireland it presents a real threat. We are a small open trading economy with a very strong foreign direct investment sector so we know the consequences can be very grave. We now see the back and forth between China and the US. Unfortunately, it is becoming a runaway train in terms of increasing tariffs.

I fully support the Irish Government and the EU position on this. It is important that we give space, take a cool level-headed approach, give dialogue a real opportunity to succeed and do our best to negotiate our way through this particularly difficult situation. That is in no way a sign of weakness - it is the right thing and smart thing to do – but we must also send a clear message that if discussion and negotiation do not work then we will respond as an EU bloc. That has already been made clear in the response to the earlier tariffs on steel and aluminium. The EU is now responding and that is the right thing to do.

We know tariffs are counterproductive. They only result in dampening economic growth and expectations, as well as increased consumer prices, inflation and unemployment and have significant potential to cause a major international and worldwide recession. That is something we all want to do our best to prevent.

My constituency of Cork South-Central has a very strong foreign direct investment sector. These tariffs will affect all sectors - food and drink, engineering, construction, agriculture and so on - but they will be particularly damaging in pharma, biopharma, medical devices and life sciences as a whole. In my constituency, there are a lot of US companies in these areas. Unfortunately, the US President has said the tariffs on pharma will be coming very soon. That is worrying. We do not know what to expect but it is not good.

It is important that as a Government we renew our strategy in foreign direct investment and engage very actively with the sector and send a very strong message to it that we will take a step-by-step approach with businesses to support them through the choppy international economic waters ahead. It is important that we restate and reiterate the attractiveness of Ireland as a location for foreign direct investment. Obviously, our well-educated and capable workforce, our access to EU markets without tariffs, our English-speaking country and the very pro-enterprise Government are important. Above all, it is critical we have a strong political consensus in the country to face this threat. Together we are stronger. This is an existential threat and we have to stand together politically so we have one voice on this and face the threat in the strongest possible way.

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