Michelle Mulherin (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. I welcome this important debate. I would also like to have the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Creed, in the House but I respect all that the Minister has had to say on this issue. Much of this debate has been pretty surreal or has oscillated between reality and unreality. Trade is really important. We are a small, open economy and we like to reward enterprise. We also see the benefits of people doing so. There is no objection to that in principle. Let us be very clear, however, that our beef farmers are being asked to take one for the team. This deal boils down to that.

The European Union, which I will call the western world, is dressing up this deal with a smattering of icing around the Paris Agreement. It is being claimed that this is really going to bring these South American countries into line and all of the developing countries that cannot possibly go in the direction in which we need them to go. The other unreality is a failure to recognise our position on the planet. That is absolutely fantastic and I will not take from that. Let us compare the position and size of our country with the size and position of those South American countries. Ultimately, we do not need any more beef coming into the European market. Our farmers are already demoralised. If they were not demoralised before, they will be now when they see what is before them. Why is the beef from South America cheaper? It is not of the same standard. What about the 270,000 tonnes already coming in? We are now faced with the prospect of those imports having the same reduced tariff as the 99,000 tonnes to come.

Our farmers are increasingly being edged out. I agree with Senator Hopkins that we do not want a €1 billion rescue package on the premise that we are going to have all of this increased trade, whether in pharmaceuticals, this, that or the other. I have the height of respect for the foreign direct investment industries operating here. We are in danger, however, of putting all of our eggs in one basket and forgetting that the champion and leading light in our economic recovery was our agriculture and agrifood sector. Some 170,000 people are employed in that sector. I know that not all of those people are working in the beef sector. We are, however, losing the run of ourselves a bit.

Regarding standards, previous speakers have referred to traceability and the use of antibiotics and hormones. We set up the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, and we have rules and regulations for everything to do with farming. We are now stating that that does not really matter because we will take in beef from somewhere else as long as a few boxes are ticked. I do not believe that we are going to be in South America monitoring carbon emissions and standards in any way comparable to what happens here. Farms and farm families have to deal with that real burden. When we get down to the essentials of this deal, we are talking about farms and farm families. The way that this is proceeding means that we are talking about changing the face of rural Ireland. The farmers have to be protected. That is what I believe.

I would like to see not just an economic assessment of the impact of this deal but also an assessment of the carbon emissions, and that has to be based on reality. I have a question I asked here earlier for the Minister on this area. Are all of the cars that are going to be sold to South America going to be electric vehicles or will they be diesel and petrol? Do we have details concerning that aspect of the deal? Is it the case that the manufacturers will be able to dump all of the vehicles that they cannot sell in Europe in South America? That will show the hypocrisy and double speak of the green agenda and the western world. I subscribe to the idea of sustainability. On a somewhat related matter, however, we can see that cobalt is required for electric vehicles. Where does that come from? It comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo where children aged seven, eight or nine years old are down mines all hours of the day. Is that where we are going to be buying cobalt from? We are going to crucify our farmers on the back of a green dream that is totally unreal and does not face up to the reality with which human beings are dealing. In this case, I am referring in particular to farmers and farming communities. I ask everyone to please wake up.