Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What has been agreed is a political agreement and so we cannot say that we cannot play politics with it; it is a political agreement. However, it still has to be turned into a legal document. This process will take approximately two years and then it will be brought to the Council of Ministers for a vote. Ireland does not have a veto because voting is done on a qualified majority and not unanimously, but these changes came in as a consequence of the Nice and Lisbon treaties. Sinn Féin opposed these treaties, warning at the time of the dangers to agriculture. Other countries such as Belgium, France and Poland have spoken out against the agreement. To stop it, Ireland would need them and others to vote against the agreement. If the deal was passed by the Council of Ministers, it would then go to the European Parliament for ratification. There is a debate over whether it is a so-called mixed agreement, and therefore needs ratification by the Parliaments of all member states, or whether it can simply be decided upon by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. The Government must act to get clarification on all these matters - we really need to know this information - and then act accordingly.

Sinn Féin came in for criticism during the recent European Parliament elections for opposing every treaty. However, we opposed those treaties because they left Ireland open to harmful trade deals such as this one. The treaties are exactly why we are in the mess we are in. There is no point saying that it will be two or eight years down the line before the deal is done; we have seen the same thing happen with designations. Rural Ireland has been destroyed by designations. The very people who stand up here and give out about designations are the same people whose own parties voted for it. Not only did they implement the designations as asked by the EU, saying "yes, sir; no, sir", they went on to implement further designations to show what good boys and girls they are. This deal is devastating for Irish beef farmers and the west of Ireland, in particular for Mayo.