Trade Agreements
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29
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Martin Heydon (FG), Kildare South

I remind the Deputy that the Government opposed the Mercosur trade deal, for very good reasons, which I have articulated. In line with our programme for Government commitment to work with like-minded countries that oppose the deal, I very much took a twin-track approach over the course of the last year. Every month that I attend the Agri-Fish Council in Brussels, trade is on the agenda. I have raised our concerns on the sensitivity of the impact of the Mercosur trade deal on our beef sector in particular. There is an economic impact of somewhere between €44 million and €55 million a year on a beef sector worth over €3 billion.
On the environmental element, our farmers have been on a journey and a trajectory of increased ambition around environmental sustainability, while producing top-quality food in line with the regulations set down by Europe, which farmers have signed up to. That has increased the sustainable credentials of their food but it has impacted their margins, and it has definitely had an impact on the cost of doing business. We then chase the higher markets to get better value for that product. That is why we do not compete with Brazilian beef abroad. We are in the higher value markets, where we get a better return. We are not in the commodity market in that space. Therefore, those environmental standards have stood to us well. However, allowing other beef into Europe to displace us in this market is inherently unfair to our farmers.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-29