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

In 2019, the then Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment commissioned an independent economic and sustainability impact assessment, ESIA, which both my Department and Teagasc fed into. As part of the ESIA, and specifically on the macroeconomic impacts of the agreement for Ireland, it was noted that shifts in employment across sectors were forecast to be marginal and to mirror changes in production across sectors. Employment was found to generally increase in manufacturing and decrease slightly in the agrifood and services sectors.
The forecast change in employment in the agrifood sector is minimal. The main impacts were found to be in other processed foods and extraction, where a 0.3% decrease in employment by 2035 is noted. For beef, sheep, other red meats and other primary products, the decrease in employment by 2035 is predicted at 0.1%, whereas dairy and other meat products see no change. In terms of the agrifood sector market impacts, the study primarily focuses on the impacts on beef producers. Assuming that additional imports would be in high-end cuts only, and depending on other factors, it states that producer returns in Ireland could fall by about 2% due to the increase in imports to the EU. This would translate to a maximum reduction in the value of Irish beef output of between €44 million and €55 million based on export figures available at the time of publication.
I put on the record of the House earlier the impact on farmers who have attained higher environmental standards but then see food coming in at a lower environmental standard given a preferential tariff rate. This is not about blocking food. The nature of global supply chains is that they are highly integrated, and we need to explain that. In the context of other rows that are happening here at the moment, there is a lack of honesty in this debate. However, giving preferential access to 99,000 tonnes by Europe was unacceptable to me, and I continuously articulated that. We all have a responsibility regarding the challenges we face in agriculture, and we have talked about bluetongue this morning, CAP reform, CBAM and different things. It is important that we do not catastrophise this. Our farmers are the most resilient businesspeople in this country. They have faced many headwinds in the past, and they will face and deal with this as well. We did our best to try to stop it with the Government vote. There is still a way to go as to whether it will come in or not, but irrespective of what happens, farmers have proven their resilience in the past and will prove it again.

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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