Fianna Fáil TD Eugene Murphy has called on the Government to give an absolute assurance that it will not support any deals around Mercosur which gives increased access to South American beef as, he contends, it would seriously undermine an already vulnerable sector in Ireland.
He said: “It has been mooted that up to 100,000 tonnes of beef access had been agreed to and informally agreed at EU level with Mercosur countries.
“This Fine Gael-led government has failed to put up any real fight at European level and accepted the Commission’s offer of at least 70,000 extra tonnes of South American Mercosur beef into Europe back in Autumn 2017. If this deal was to come to pass it will have a detrimental effect on an already threatened beef sector with a no deal Brexit on the horizon”.
Deputy Murphy said that he is calling on the Government to give an absolute assurance that it will not support any such deal.
