Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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12. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he has read the recently released Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and if he has any concerns about the reported roll-back on progress on contentious areas such as patent rules and the investor state resolution system, particularly given the ongoing negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the assurances from both sides in the negotiations that this agreement is in the best interests of the public; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41750/15]

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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For almost 30 years now, we have seen countries from the developed world lower tax rates at the top and rip up a lot of regulations - basically, it is state-sanctioned mass corporate welfare. The incomes of the bottom 90% of have stood still while productivity levels have soared, and the top 10% reap an ever-increasing slice of the pie. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, TTP, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP, are legal mechanisms designed to ensure that the profits of corporations are ring-fenced against any developments in the battle for workers' rights, climate justice and socially positive progress. The Minister must have concerns about the TTIP.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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We have had this debate previously in the House.

Free trade agreements are an effort to make it easier to trade across borders. In the course of the recent recovery, half of the extra jobs have come from exporting. We depend on access to markets as a key aspect of our ability to bring companies overseas and to grow. I have visited Japan, Canada and the United States with companies seeking to penetrate these markets and there are real difficulties in those markets, particularly around public procurement rules that keep Irish businesses out. The purpose of these agreements is to create opportunities for companies to trade, and I welcome them. These agreements also enshrine - the Deputy keeps asking about this - provisions to ensure there will be no dilution of labour, environment and health standards. That was in the mandate that we signed. These are protected in the agreements.

The Deputy's original question was about the TTP. I have not been party to the specifics of the agreement between the United States and Japan. I am sure there are, as in every trade agreement, those who criticise some of the provisions as not going far enough and others who say they go too far. There are always sectors which have defensive interests. If a sector enjoys protection, it will not want to see those rules changed to allow in new competition and those within it will give out, while others will say the provisions are welcome.

I am not in a position to comment on an agreement between Japan, Malaysia, the United States and others. It would be unfair of the Deputy to ask me to comment on those. In terms of what we are doing at European level, we are at pains to ensure that the agreements are negotiated transparently and that there is protection of the public interest, but also that there are significant opportunities for new business and new jobs to be created on both sides.

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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The problem is that there is a serious lack of transparency and there is a serious concern that the public interest is not to the forefront of the ambitions of the agreements. Only in August last, the European Commissioner for Trade, Dr. Cecilia Malmström, promised another bout of TTIP transparency, stating that even more documents from the negotiations would be made available, but when the promise was put to the test a few days later and the corporate transparency body Corporate Europe Observatory received documents on exchanges between the tobacco lobby and the Brussels institution concerning TTIP and the EU-Japan trade talks, it turned out most of the documents had been redacted. It was described as an exercise in black humour.

Professor Joseph Stiglitz, a renowned economist, has stated:

The reality is that this is an agreement to manage its members' trade and investment relations – and to do so on behalf of each country's most powerful business lobbies. Make no mistake: It is evident from the main outstanding issues, over which negotiators are still haggling, that the TPP is not about "free" trade.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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I would have to respect Professor Stiglitz, because I sat in his classes at some stage, but I must disagree with him on this issue. For a small trading economy like ours, if we can get the barriers down to conduct trade in ICT products for public procurement contracts in the United States, that is good business. It means a lot of smart companies that have solutions to problems can do business in the United States, Canada or Japan, the latter of which has traditionally been a very closed economy. Since the Korean agreement, there has been a trebling of trade between Europe and South Korea. Real opportunities have been opened up and new jobs have emerged. I have not heard anyone giving out that the agreement with Korea has resulted in any dilution of the protections that the Deputy is concerned about.

In terms of transparency, the Commissioner, Dr. Cecilia Malmström, has been extraordinarily open. After the negotiation sessions, all the documents are made available. There is stakeholder engagement with those who are representative of trade unions, etc., around the documents so that they can give their view. Obviously, some things were redacted because, where there are negotiations going on, as the Deputy will be aware from his business experience, one does not publish the detail of offers on a tariff or whether it is three versus two. Those are matters on which there is a balance to be struck across a range of sectors, and some elements will only be seen towards the end when they are finalised.

I am aware that there are critics of the agreements. The Deputy only reads the comments of critics. He does not read any of the general commentary about what this is about or what it is trying to achieve. He discounts every protection that the Commissioner seeks to put in as being inadequate. I would have to say that the Deputy is coming to this with a fairly closed mind most of the time.

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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I refute that comment. I even read what the Minister says on this matter. How can he say that I have a closed mind on the issue?

The TTP is a forerunner of the TTIP. It is interesting that Mr. Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch has pointed out some of the roll-backs on the TPP, stating, with regard to access to affordable medicines, that the TPP's rules on patents for both developing countries and the United States would roll back initial reforms and make medicines more expensive in pretty dramatic ways. He adds that the investor state dispute resolution system is actually expanded so that more types of law can be attacked, and many more companies will be able to attack the laws of all countries party to the trade deal. In Europe alone, only a fraction of US companies are able to avail of the investor state dispute mechanism. It is worrying that if we sign the TTIP, 47,000 US-owned companies in Europe will be able to use the investor state dispute mechanism in order to challenge state regulation.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The Constitution has offered investors far more protection than has ever been envisaged by the ISDS mechanism. We have very strong protections for companies and no one has complained that those protections have been abused.

As I outlined in an earlier reply, the ISDS mechanism that has been put in place by Europe has been dramatically narrowed compared to the versions in some of the older investment agreements, which the Deputy rightly criticises. The Deputy needs to read the new provisions, which are much narrower. One must show demonstrable wrongful discrimination against a company in order to use this as a basis for taking a case. There will be an appeal mechanism under the agreements. Those who will hear the cases are persons who are fit to be appointed as judges, and the EU will be involved in their appointment. The procedures will be transparent and new rules are being put in place. All of those protections are being brought in to deal with legitimate concerns that the system was not adequate in the past. The Deputy needs to evaluate these protections rather than continuing to repeat what was stated four years ago about some other agreement in some other place. This is about these agreements, and whether we are putting in the correct protections and whether they are in the public interest, and if the Deputy assesses them in a fair-minded way, he will see that they are.