Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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226. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the position regarding the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49526/14]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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The purpose of the negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is to reduce barriers to trade and investment in order to generate jobs and growth. According to assessments made by the European Commission and other European bodies, a comprehensive TTIP could over time boost the EU's GDP by 0.5% per annum, resulting in 400,000 additional jobs across the EU. Ireland has particularly strong economic links with the US, with over 118,000 people employed in 585 US companies here. The total level of trade (imports and exports) between Ireland and the US in 2012 was €55 billion. The US is Ireland biggest merchandise export market. The most recent data from the CSO shows that Ireland’s services exports to the US increased by 40% in 2012. Notwithstanding the present high level of trade enormous benefits could be derived from a comprehensive and ambitious TTIP.

My Department has commissioned a study on the potential impact of the TTIP for Ireland. This study is intended to assist in guiding the Irish position in the negotiations. The study is expected to be finalised in January 2015 and published in early 2015.

The initial findings by Copenhagen Economics show that the benefit to Ireland would be more than double the EU average, with 1.1% added to GDP. Other preliminary findings include increased exports (2.7%), increases in real wages (1.4%) and investment (1.6%). Opportunities are expected mainly in manufacturing – pharmaceutical and chemical industry, electrical machinery and other advanced machinery; services – insurance and ICT and Agriculture and processed foods.

A total of seven rounds of negotiations in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have taken place to date, the most recent during the week beginning 29 September last year in the US. A summary of each of the Rounds is included in the reply to Question No 179 [48982/14] of 18 December 2015.

The next round of negotiations is scheduled to take place in Brussels during the week of 2 February 2015.

On 7 January, 2015, the EU Commission published a number of documents, all of which can be found at .

Included in the published documents are some of the EU’s proposals for legal text in the TTIP that have been tabled for discussion with the US. The areas covered by the texts published are competition, food safety and animal and plant health, customs issues, technical barriers to trade, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and government-to-government dispute settlement. The EU Commission also published EU position papers explaining the EU's approach in the areas of engineering, vehicles, and sustainable development. This brings to 15 the total number of published EU position papers on TTIP. In addition, the EU Commission has published readers guides to the documents it has made available explaining what each text means, a glossary of terms and acronyms, and a series of factsheets that set out in plain language what is at stake in each chapter of TTIP and what the EU's aims are in each area. I very much welcome the openness and transparency which will help to demystify the negotiations.

The EU Commission published its report on the results of the public consultation on investor protection on 13 January, 2015. The Report, along with explanatory material, can be found at .