Trade Agreements
Dail Éireann — 2025-10-14
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Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

The difficulty is that a predecessor of the Minister's agreed at European Council level to opening the negotiating mandate. It was at that point that the original sin in respect of Mercosur was committed because, since then, we have been on the back foot. Even now, as the Minister rightly outlines, he has to work with others across the European Union. There is a very real threat his voice will be a minority one and, because of the qualified majority voting rules, he will not be in a position to block this.
There has been a Commission proposal for a regulation to strengthen protections for farmers. I do not believe it does what it says on the tin because it requires that there be a threat of serious injury to the sector before an investigation is even launched. This is after the Mercosur agreement comes in. Is the Minister using any other leverage? There are other things countries that might not be as concerned about Mercosur might want and need Ireland to vote with them on other issues. Is the Minister using those levers to ensure that we kill this deal dead?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-10-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:04+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-10-14