The agreement reached between the UK and the EU in the early hours of this morning simply means that negotiators have been given the green light to move on to the serious end of the business.

In the case of Irish agriculture, this starts and ends with maintaining the status quo in terms of free access for our agri-food exports into the UK, one of the highest-priced food markets in the world and one where dietary habits are closely aligned to our export profile.

This, of course, extends beyond just preventing the imposition of tariffs.

Agri-food imports and exports between the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Britain.

Non-tariff barriers

If trade volumes are to be protected, we must also ensure that any agreement has the legal standing to prevent non-tariff barriers.

These include increased inspections that create delays at ports, divergence in labelling regulations or even state aid rules that give competitive advantage to producers/processors in the domestic market.

Some may be surprised that a lorryload of beef leaving the west of Ireland tends to have just a 30-minute time slot for delivery at a central packing unit in England.

In this scenario, any delays created at ports leading to uncertainty in transit time could cause major problems for Irish exporters.

Of course, ensuring that we have unrestricted access is only one part of the equation.

The other area of concern to Irish agriculture is that the value of the UK market is protected post-Brexit. Unrestricted access to a market where we are being asked to compete with cheap food imports will be of little use to Irish farmers.

While some have been quick to dismiss UK retailers and food importers looking beyond existing food suppliers post-Brexit, this should give little comfort.

UK demand for food

The UK only produces enough food to feed 60% of its population and has to import €100m worth of food every day of every year.

Assess this against a back drop of commitments from Brexiteers that food prices in a UK outside of the EU would fall, and reassurances clearly don’t go far enough.

It will be essential that the Irish Government ensures that in phase two discussions on trade there is a legal framework to ensure that east/west trade not only continues unrestricted, but that our presence in the market cannot be undermined by imported food produced from a lower cost base and to lower standards.

This will not be easy to achieve.

A cheap food policy has long been part of the narrative within the corridors of Westminster

A cheap food policy has long been part of the narrative within the corridors of Westminster and, when combined with the size of the market, it is easy see the temptation for the UK to use agriculture as a major pawn in subsequent trade deals outside of the EU.

The events of today are really nothing more than political staging post.

For Irish agriculture, although the mood music is perhaps a little more positive, nothing has changed and the risks remain.

We hope that Ireland has plenty of political capital left in reserve as the serious business is now only starting.

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