This article is from page 51 of the 2008-05-06 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 51 JPG
MARY Coughlan met the man with his finger on the button controlling European Agriculture on Thursday when she held her last face-to-face meeting with Peter Mandelson before the start of the World Trade Talks. Speaking after the meeting, Minister Coughlan reaffirmed her “deep con- cern’ about aspects of the current world trade talks.
The negotiations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) involve over 150 countries and have now been go- ing on without a resolution for seven years. The talks cover agriculture, manufacturing, services, trade rules and trade facilitation but have been
concentrating heavily on agriculture in recent months.
The Director General of WTO has indicated that he proposes to call a ministerial meeting in May to dis- cuss agriculture and manufacturing trade.
“Ireland is a trading nation and as such we have a strong national inter- est in seeing a successful trade round and a strong WTO,” said Coughlan. ‘However we are deeply concerned at the imbalance in the current nego- tiations.”
As things stand, we see EU and Irish agriculture are being asked to carry a disportionate burden in the overall effort to conclude a deal.”
Minister Coughlan said that she
drew the Commissioner’s attention to the dramatic changes in world food markets since these negotia- tions commenced.
“I pointed out that many EU Gov- ernments now share our conviction about the need to maintain a strong agricultural production base in Eu- rope.”
But this critical fact is being ignored in the WTO process to date.” contin- ued Minister Coughlan.
“The agrifood sector in Ireland, built up over years to become the huge contributor that it now is to our economy must not be damaged by a WTO agreement which fails to take account of the new realities emerg- ing in world food supply.”
The minister emphasised the very real difficulties for Irish agriculture and the food industry from some of the proposals emanating from the WTO in Geneva.
Minister Coughlan outlined in detail the dramatic impact of hugely in- creased imports of beef and the con- centration of these imports on high value cuts of meat.
She called on the Commissioner to ensure a meaningful level of protec- tion for our industry.
She also said that our concerns were not confined to the beef sector and underscored to the Commissioner the difficulties some of the propos- als would generate for our dairy, pig- meat and sheepmeat sectors also.