Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I have often said that our farmers deserve three things: fair prices, a fair CAP, and fair play. On all three, successive Governments have failed. On prices, we still have the diktats coming from factories and retailers, and we have never got a stranglehold on the conglomerate interests that are controlling the prices received. On CAP, we now have a situation where farmers are receiving fewer payments but are being asked to do more and more every year.

What do I mean by fair play? The first thing I mean by that is a recognition that the farmers in the Gallery tonight and across this country produce food to the highest standards and with the highest number of regulations in the world. Nowhere outside of the European Union matches the controls on farmers in respect of the climate, the environment, animal welfare and biodiversity. Yet, while they are expected to meet all of those obligations, they are also expected to compete with states and farmers which do not have to adhere to the same level of regulation. That is unfair. Not only are they expected to compete, we are now being faced with a trade deal that wants to tip the balance in favour of those farming organisations that do not adhere to the same regulations.

The approach by successive Governments on this matter has been very cynical. I have heard Ministers from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over the past decade and a half indicating that they oppose the Mercosur deal. They never say that the only reason Mercosur is on the table at all is an Irish Government signed up to a negotiating mandate and permitted the European Commission to open negotiations when it could have said, "Stop" when a unanimity principle was in place. They do not say that there were countless occasions over the past decade where the Irish Government could have stopped the Mercosur negotiations in their tracks and failed to do so. They do not say, loud and clear, so that the European Commission can hear, that Ireland will not accept a lunacy whereby, in this House, we have people talking about cutting herds in Ireland and Europe, while at the same time importing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of beef from the far end of the world, and literally mowing down rainforests to produce that beef. The lunacy has to stop now. We need clear, unequivocal language that the European Commission hears. We, the Irish people, will not accept the Mercosur trade deal.

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