James Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister has pointed out, we need to go through this deal in detail. There are many aspects of it, affecting many parts of our community, not just rural Ireland and the beef sector but other parts of the rural economy such as the dairy sector. Of course we should be concerned about our beef producers and should protect them. We need time to examine this deal to see how we can mitigate the impact of 99,000 tonnes more beef coming into the EU market, which we sell into. However, we also have to look at the positive impact it will have on the drinks industry, machinery and medical devices, an area in which we are a world leader.

Senator Mac Lochlainn talks of a sell-out, but there was no sell-out here whatever. While we might consider the rainforests ours, the people of Brazil might have a very different attitude, as we might if they called the bogs in Ireland "our bogs". The best way to influence people is to negotiate, have a relationship and trade with them, not to ignore them.

There is much in this deal that can be good and many thousands of jobs can flow from it, but there are dangers too. The Minister highlighted those dangers clearly, as somebody who lives in rural Ireland and grew up on a beef farm. I grew up on a farm in north County Dublin and there are 800 farmers in my constituency. I am concerned for their welfare but I am also concerned about the climate and am committed to our climate change protocol. I want to see it protected for our own well-being and for the future of our children, their children and their children's children. However, we will not do that by refusing to deal with those who are in control of large tranches of our earth, where the lows of the world exist. Our best chance of influencing them is to try to bring them around to our way of thinking and up to our standards. This deal makes it very clear that there will be no dilution of standards in beef production.

The EU cannot go backwards and this is a deal for both sides. It is worthy of proper and full examination. We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, as some here intend for us to do, before we have even seen what the deal really means. There is much time left to examine this. If it transpires that this Government or the next - there could be an election between now and then - deem it inappropriate for us to pursue this deal, I have no doubt that we will oppose it. As has been outlined, we have European allies in Poland, Belgium and France, which is a heavy hitter in this area, and others will share our concerns, given the pigmeat industry in Denmark and the Netherlands.

This is not a done deal; it is a headline deal and an agreement in principle, which needs to be examined. We can be negative and throw it out before examining it or we can be sensible and look at the positives and at mitigating the negative impacts to bring us into a new market. I will finish with this. At a time when we might be about to lose the British market because of Brexit, we need new partners, new allies and new markets.