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Gearing up for next W TO talks

This article is from page 49 of the 2008-04-29 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 49 JPG

THE wagons have started to circle ahead of next months WTO talks with the Minster for Agriculture and Food, Mary Coughlan, travelling to Berlin last week for a meeting with her German counterpart, Horst See- etae

According to Coughlan, the pair discussed a wide rang of WTO rfre- lated issues and agreed that the latest developments posed great dangers to EU agriculture and they expressed strong dissatisfaction with the direc- tion the talks were taking.

Both Ministers were agreed on the need for balance under the current proposals and that EU agriculture could not be sacrificed for the sake of a deal.

Following on from her meeting with her German counterpart, Coughlan has arranged a further meeting with Commissioner Mandelson, to take place today.

Coughlan is likely to use the op- portunity to outline her dissatisfac- tion with the current direction of the talks on WTO and the serious dif- ficulties that could emerge for Irish agriculture.

A large number of Clare farmers attended the national IFA protest against WTO in Dublin last week.

“Despite it being a very busy time on farms – naturally more than 10,000 farmers protested. The large rally gives a definite mandate to President Padraig Walsh to try and persuade our government and Eu- ropean politicians for a complete u-

turn on the deal that is proposed,’ said IFA Chairman Michael Lynch.

“No deal is better than a bad deal and with food inflation and scarci- ties in parts of the world why should European and Irish consumers be forced to become dependant on food from South America while their own agriculture industry is made redun- CP Tal a

Meanwhile, speaking in the Dail last week, Clare TD, Joe Carey (FG) put pressure on Coughlan to stand strong on the WTO.

“Mr Mandelson is following an his- torical British obsession with cheap food. The UK can no longer feed it- self and this mode of thinking was fine when they had an Empire behind them but we now live in a different world,” he said.

“You Minister must not fall into the trap of thinking that protection of the Single Farm Payment will suf- fice and keep people happy at this time. This is not at issue here. This is not a time for presentation and mealy mouthed responses.

You have previously not acknowl- edged the seriousness of the deficien- cies of Brazilian beef and at this time both you and the Taoiseach need to send out a strong and unequivocal signal from the Council of Ministers that this deal in its current state is just not on.”

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