The Irish Government is not planning to veto the deal agreed between the EU and the Mercosur trading block.

Government leaders including An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Junior Minister for Finance Michael D’Arcy said Ireland cannot be seen as a protectionist country in terms of trade. They were speaking at the opening of the new M11 Gorey to Enniscorthy motorway on Thursday.

The Government has commissioned an assessment of the Mercosur deal, which would see 99,000t of beef exported to the EU with reduced tariffs, to see what impact it would have on the Irish agricultural industry.

“Ireland is not a protectionist country. We trade extremely well. We sell 90% of everything we produce on the island to somewhere else,” Minister D’Arcy told the Irish Farmers Journal. “We have to be careful that we don’t allow that overtake the mindset of an individual sector. That said, we are not going to abandon any individual sector.”

The standards we have here in Ireland on environmental levels, traceability and the packaging and quality of the beef we produce would be completely undermined

The IFA took the opportunity to hand each of the TDs present and An Taoiseach a letter outlining their concerns about the future of the industry. Varadkar told the IFA he would not stand in the way of the Mercosur trade deal.

IFA Wexford chair James Kehoe said: “He [An Taoseach] explained to me the reasons why the [Mercosur] deal would have to go through; that we are exporting 90% of our beef and we need to be seen to allow free trade and not to block any trade deals. I acknowledged that, but it is the timing of the deal, with Brexit on the doorstep.

“I understand that we are exporting so much and we have to be pro-trade. But the standards we have here in Ireland on environmental levels, traceability and the packaging and quality of the beef we produce would be completely undermined by a non-traceable, very environmentally harmful beef imported to Europe.”

In the letter he gave to the politicians present, Kehoe outlined the plight that Wexford’s 3,500 farm families are facing in light of the current crisis, many of them with some beef on their farm.

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