Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

We will shortly bring our action plan on market diversification to Cabinet. That is a joint initiative between my Department and the Department of enterprise. Of course, as part of that, we will have to look at how we can help Irish companies looking to export to new markets too. The priority at the moment is to try to minimise the impact of tariffs, however. We have published our economic impact assessment through the Department of Finance. In my letter to Maroš Šefčovič on reciprocal tariffs, I specifically referenced agrifood, aviation, med tech and pharma as key areas of concern from an Irish perspective. On pharma specifically, the US section 232 national security investigation into the import of pharmaceuticals, semi-conductors and commercial aircraft and jet engines is ongoing. I spoke to the US trade representative, ambassador Jamieson Greer, and made the point that we should seek to work together on pharma, and we can do something mutually beneficial. US pharma companies need access to a market of 460 million people in the EU. He did say to me on that call that the US was open to creative solutions, so those dialogues continue.

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