Peter Callanan (Fianna Fail)

The World Trade Organisation has the potential to be beneficial and politicians, including the Minister, have a duty to ensure this potential is realised.

I listened carefully to the Minister's extraordinarily strong contribution, which I appreciate and on which I compliment her. If she had not used such a tone, her position could have been misrepresented. Her address was exemplary in that it indicated clearly and honestly that there is a point beyond which she will not allow the negotiators to go. The proposals Commissioner Mandelson has placed on the table cross the line and it may be necessary to ask him to step aside.

If we in Ireland and the rest of Europe are serious about protecting farmers, we must recognise that our agricultural sector is different from that of other continents. We do not have a ranch structure and most of the ranch-type estates we once had were, thankfully, broken up a long time ago. The continents with which we compete have ranches, some of which cover tracts of land larger than this island. They do not produce goods of the standard we in Europe expect. In addition, community preference is essential to ensure that Europe has a constant supply of home-produced food. It is equally important, however, that we engage in some degree of trade for the benefit of Europe and mankind as a whole. Commissioner Mandelson and his policies are no good for Europe or the poor of the world. While they may satisfy British interests, the only permanent item on Britain's agenda is to pursue its own interests.

Subsidies in place here and elsewhere include preferential credit terms offered to exporters of agricultural products. The United States also examines such subsidies but, having examined the list of subsidies available to US agriculture, I have been unable to find the subsidy for transport to the port of export which is available to US agriculture. To meet the stated objective of full parallelism, all export credits with terms of more than 180 days must be fully eliminated. It will be critical to ensure that officially supported agriculture export credit agencies are able to demonstrate on an annual basis that they charge adequate premia to be self-financing and have not received government subsidies to support their arrangements. With regard to state trading enterprises — government owned monopolies or companies which control all exports of certain agricultural products, for example, the Canadian Wheat Board and the New Zealand Dairy Board — the statutory privileges and regulatory benefits enjoyed by these government funded companies must be eliminated. Rather than pushing Europe any further, we must take this action to ensure the trade distorting effects of these companies' practices, including price pooling, anti-trust immunity, direct and indirect preferential financial conditions, preferential transport services and exclusive utilisation of preferential market access quotas, are eliminated.

The Minister will negotiate with the United States and others. The US Government has publicly stated it will legislate to introduce any changes agreed at the talks by 2007. I do not trust the United States on this matter or other issues discussed frequently in the House, including on this morning's Order of Business. No US President or Congress will impose a reduction in subsidies to American farmers in the year preceding an election. Our bottom line should be that we will introduce measures only when the United States has done so.