I listened to the debate in my office today. The industry will be decimated, full stop. We have seen it with the fishing industry. We cannot say we went out and bargained for this, that and the other. The fishing industry was sold out. We should have a fishing industry worth billions of euro worth here. The Minister mentioned in his speech about quality of life. How can a person have a better quality of life if he or she is eating muck? It is muck. We debated a Bill on vaping about two hours ago and the carcinogens in it and we are banning it straight away. We will, however, bring in 90,000 tonnes of beef and 180,000 tonnes of poultry but it is okay to eat that because we will have a better quality of life. It is absolutely bonkers. The Government will drive young farmers into extinction because if this goes through they will have nothing. The EU fines farmers for environmental breaches and all of that yet it will be grand to go over to Brazil and other countries where there is massive deforestation. We are talking about an environmental impact and the carbon footprint to import this stuff. The EU does not care about it. It is all about getting the best deal for Ursula and her buddies because they paid off another country during the week with millions and millions of euro. This is how the game works. It is absolutely farcical that we are here and we have been waiting so long for this. I have listened to other speakers state that all our MEPs have a duty there. If the deal is not good enough for Ireland let us be honest with Europe and say no, we got stung once. We dipped our fingers in the water and we got burnt. That was in regard to the fishing industry. Now you are telling us the water is not as hot any more, it is probably lukewarm, we will get away with it and everything will be grand. I know the Minister of State mentioned trade. There is no guarantee with that. What have we got in trade when it comes to our fishing industry? We have foreign vehicles and foreign trawlers coming in wiping the country out and we have the best fish in the world. We saw the other day that crabs came off a truck that were being exported to Portugal. I always say that when you go on holidays, it is the best of Irish fish you are eating. I am very worried about this deal. We are banning carcinogens in vaping as we debated today but yet we will bring thousands and thousands of tonnes of muck - that is all I can call it - into this country and we are being told it will be fine because we will get better deals for something else.

Sentiment score: 0.14