IFA president Joe Healy has said there is an increasing realisation among farm bodies across Europe of the potential damaging implications of a hard Brexit.

Healy last week attended a meeting of the European farm group COPA where, following his attendance at IFA’s recent Brexit event, COPA president Martin Merrild made a strong statement to the meeting on the implications for countries with significant exports to the UK, as well as the potential impact for all EU countries if product now going to the UK ends up back on the EU 27 market.

Ahead of the Brussels meeting last week, a delegation led by Healy and including representatives from the agri-food industry – Meat Industry Ireland, the Irish Dairy Industry Association and Food & Drink Ireland – held a meeting with the Taoiseach Enda Kenny where they outlined Brexit’s serious ramifications for Irish agriculture.

Healy said: “The unified approach from the industry underlined to the Taoiseach just how serious a challenge Brexit poses. We set out that the agri-food sector, which has an export value of over €11bn and supports 300,000 jobs, is approaching the edge of a cliff and we need cool heads to prevail.”

IFA’s has set out three key objectives on Brexit: maintaining a close trading relationship with the UK market; retaining the value of the market and securing a fully-funded CAP after 2020. The meeting with the Taoiseach also discussed the need for discussions on the future EU-UK relationship to be commenced early in the negotiating process in order to minimise economic uncertainty and the potential for major economic damage for exposed sectors.

The delegation also put forward a number of measures to support the agri-food sector in the short and medium term.