Pat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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44. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will consider reviewing the Food Wise 2025 targets in view of the upcoming potential difficulties which may be caused by Brexit. [12200/17]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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Food Wise 2025, the ten year strategy for the agri-food sector published in July 2015 identifies the opportunities and challenges facing the sector and provides an enabling strategy that will allow the sector to grow and prosper. Food Wise includes more than 400 specific recommendations, spread across the cross-cutting themes of sustainability, innovation, human capital, market development and competitiveness; as well as specific sectoral recommendations.

If these recommendations are implemented, the expert committee which drew up the Food Wise 2025 Strategy believed that ambitious growth projections were achievable by 2025; including

- increasing the value of agri-food exports by 85% to €19 billion; and

- the creation of 23,000 additional jobs in the agri-food sector, all along the supply chain from primary production to high value added product development.

With regard to the Oireachtas Committee’s recommendation to review the strategy in the light of Brexit, it is important to understand that Food Wise 2025 is a living and evolving strategy. I chair quarterly meetings of the High Level Implementation Committee (HLIC), with high level representatives from all the relevant Departments and State agencies. The committee reviews progress on detailed actions on a quarterly basis, in order to identify and solve problems quickly. Brexit has now been included as a standard item on the agenda of each meeting of the HLIC.

It is not yet clear what the final outcome of the UK's Brexit decision will be. While the value of agri food exports to the UK declined in 2016, primarily as a result of the reduction in the value of sterling, the overall value of exports increased. A hard Brexit involving the imposition of WTO tariffs would have a more significant adverse affect on the value of exports, but our stated aim is to avoid such a scenario.

In any event it is clear that the implementation of the Food Wise recommendations, particularly those related to market development, competitiveness and innovation, will assume even greater importance in the light of the UK decision, regardless of the ultimate outcome.