I heard a few Members of the House speaking tonight about the fisheries and what we have lost. I have been engaging with the Minister of State, and I hope he will address that issue and how the EU is taking advantage of our seas. With regard to the Mercosur deal, I welcome Deputy Gogarty's acknowledgment that there are some benefits. There are farmers here tonight. I come from a constituency in north Dublin. The only fields in my constituency are GAA pitches but I have been contacted by a lot of people. I am also well aware of the environmental impact this deal is going to create. From speaking to people, and from all the emails I got into my office, as it stands the deal is fundamentally incompatible with Irish agriculture given the food safety standards our farmers are held to and the regulations that they have to meet compared with those for the producers of meat we will be importing from the Mercosur countries. It is completely hypocritical. I welcome the work that the Minister, Deputy Heydon, and the leader of the regional group, the Minister of State, Deputy Seán Canney, did in relation to Mercosur. This is why I welcome the fact that we are voting against the Mercosur agreement. With regard to including the strict limits on antibiotic use and the complete ban on growth hormones, allowing imports from countries that permit weak regulation in this area is unacceptable. It is indefensible and it undermines the trust in our food system. Ireland is known around the world for how good our food system is. I heard a lot of Members talking about labelling. I will be very interested to see how the labelling will be done. I welcome some parts of the Sinn Féin motion but I will not be supporting the motion. If one reads the entire motion, there is a lot of stuff in it that is not good. The agreement also contradicts Ireland's climate commitments. As an environmental engineer it does not make sense to me for our farmers to be held to the strictest environmental standards while on the other side of the world the Amazon rainforest will be cut down for cattle to be reared, and then giant ships will be used to ship the beef here to be eaten. It makes no sense when you look at the entire carbon emissions of the Earth. I welcome that we are voting against this Mercosur deal. We should not support any trade agreement that compromises food safety, animal welfare, public health and climate responsibility. This agreement should be rejected outright.

Sentiment score: 0.14