Niall Ó Brolcháin (Green Party)

It is my pleasure to welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Cuffe, to the Seanad and to see him here, covering his brief of horticulture and agriculture, key issues for the Green Party. I thank Senator Prendergast for mentioning the farmers' market aspect.

So far, the debate has been good. Senator Bradford said this was a green jersey issue. That resonates with me, not because of the word "green" but because it is an Irish issue and we must all get behind it. I join others in giving support to the ministerial team which negotiated on behalf of Ireland on the CAP agreement.

The Common Agricultural Policy and food security are very much intertwined and food security is very dear to the hearts of those in the Green Party. Our policy states that food security can never be left to the vagaries of the market, a very important point. I grew up in a rural farming area, a sugar company baby, as one might say. My father worked for the Irish Sugar Company and I grew up in an area that was surrounded by Teagasc, or, as it was known then, the Agricultural Institute, on one side and Erin Foods on another. The Irish Sugar Company was very much part of this landscape. It is very sad for me to see the loss of production of sugar in this country which was introduced during the Lemass era.

Agriculture has always been an enormous part of what we are in this country. It is a much greater proportion of our economy than it is in Britain, for example. I understand that British agriculture forms roughly 1% to 2% of that country's economy, which it could quite easily do without, because financial matters were considered to be much more important than agriculture. The reality is we all eat food and none of us eat money. Agriculture is very important to the security of any country. Ireland is lucky in that we can sustain the population we have, something the new Prime Minister of Britain cannot say because Britain cannot sustain its population with the agriculture it has.

In Ireland, aspects such as horticulture are not valued in the same way as beef cattle farming or the dairy sector. We specialise and that is important. However, food security is crucial for our future and our survival. Again, the Green Party states:

The Green Party will try to lobby for changes in the World Trade Organisation to protect domestic food production from competition from cheaper imports. The Greens believe that every country in the world, particularly a Third World country, must be allowed to take adequate protection measures in order to ensure its own sustainable self-sufficiency in food, thus establishing an equilibrium in the balance of goods produced for home and export.

At present, the World Trade Organisation refuses to let countries distinguish - in their rules on imports or on what can legally be sold in their territory - between products on the basis of the way in which they are produced, if that distinction applies to imported as well as to domestic products. The World Trade Organisation must be reformed to allow countries to ban imported goods that have been produced under substandard animal welfare conditions or by using banned agri-chemicals.

The point of the policy is that it is crucial that the standards we apply in this country also should be applied to the food imported into this country. I spoke once on the madness of flying in broccoli. Importing huge amounts of vegetables such as broccoli into this country by flying them in from South America is simply not sustainable.

We can look at what is happening at present in regard to the Icelandic volcano. I am obsessed by it because it will have a great impact-----