An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-13
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Mary Lou McDonald (SF), Dublin Central

The Mercosur fiasco has the Taoiseach's fingerprints all over it. He claimed for years that he was defending Irish interests, yet when the decisive moment came Ireland was left isolated in a tiny minority because the Taoiseach had failed to lead, build alliances and act. France and Poland took a stand and Austria and Hungary likewise. Belgium could not support the deal an the Netherlands made its opposition clear. Ireland, on the Taoiseach’s watch, showed up late, voted “No” and utterly failed to influence events. Now this dangerous deal advances, threatening Irish farmers and exposing consumers to low standards, weaker traceability and food produced in ways that we would not tolerate here. Why did the Taoiseach let this happen? Why did he fail to build the blocking coalition that was clearly possible? Will he finally accept that his complacency, dithering and deference to Brussels have put Irish livelihoods, the environment and consumers at real risk?

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-13