OTHER PARTIES AND ORGANISATIONS:THE LATEST World Trade Organisation agriculture proposals on offer are "even more worrying than we originally thought", the Irish Farmers' Association has warned.
Farmers must be given a guarantee that the Government will veto the world trade talks if the deal would damage Irish agriculture, IFA representative Séamus O’Brien told the Forum on Europe.
The WTO’s most up-to-date proposals, issued last Monday, hold “no ambiguity”, he said. “There are no gains for Ireland or Europe in what is on this table. Europe is throwing away our bargaining power, I believe.”
However, Mr O’Brien said the IFA did not oppose the Lisbon Treaty: “Some people see demons in Lisbon. Farmers don’t see any demons in Lisbon, but we are full of fear. We are full of mistrust.
“I am from Carlow, and I know what the people of Carlow – not alone farmers – feel about the loss of the sugar industry which was because of world trade developments.
“The same will happen to the beef industry. There is no doubt about it. Bórd Bia, a State organisation, says that if this goes through two of every three steaks eaten in this country in the coming years will be South American.”
“[Peter] Mandelson is selling us out and he comes from a British political tradition that has no support or concern for agriculture, or the Common Agricultural Policy,” he said.
Mr O’Brien said he believed the Government when it said that it would veto any future attempt to curb Ireland’s corporate tax rate. “But,” he said, “if you want Irish farmers to support the Lisbon Treaty on June 12th you will have to give the same assurances to agriculture in relation to WTO.”
Sinn Féin MEP Mary Lou McDonald said the Government had negotiated “a very poor deal” that failed to “enhance Ireland’s standing at the heart of Europe”.
Highlighting the change in Sinn Féin’s attitudes to the EU, she said: “The debate isn’t about whether we are European, or part of the EU, or whether or not working with our EU partners is valuable. All of those matters are settled.”
Former Progressive Democrats TD Mae Sexton asked whether voters should support “those new converts to the European project who I presume now admit that they were wrong in their opposition to all previous treaties”.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said it would “be too easy” for him to withdraw his party from the Yes campaign.
“There is no conspiracy here between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, the Progressive Democrats and other parties to sell something to the Irish people that would not be in the greater interests of this country,” he said.
Former Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins said Lisbon would accelerate the privatisation of health services – which the Government has already embarked upon.
Roger Cole of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance said the Government had already “terminated Irish neutrality by allowing well over a million US troops land in Shannon”.
Questioning Taoiseach Brian Cowen, former Green MEP Patricia McKenna said: “You can’t deny the fact that the EU has become more militarised over the years . . . Ireland has signed up to every single military thing so far.”
Meanwhile, Lorcan Ó Cinnéide of the Irish Fish Producers’ Organisation acknowledged that the majority of Irish people had benefited from EU membership. However, fishermen operated in an industry completely governed by Brussels, he said. “Our experience of that – unlike the rest of the economy – has been extremely negative.
“We would hope that, post-Lisbon, it isn’t accepted that the decline of the marine industry and fishing is inevitable,” the IFPO chief executive said.
“Our experience of common working by the EU has been a spectacular failure,” he said.
