Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with responsibility for new market development, Martin Heydon has said Ireland is looking at new markets to mitigate the fallout from Brexit.

In an in-depth interview with AgriLand editor Stella Meehan, Minister Heydon said that he is always looking to broaden the market for Irish produce and create new opportunities for trade.

“I’m very keen that we develop as many new market opportunities as we can. I led a number of virtual trade missions in the autumn and obviously with Covid-19, we’ve had to change our approach to that. So we had detailed engagement with our customers in Southeast Asia in early November when we did five different virtual trade missions.

“I’ve had detailed discussions with other key markets we’re trying to get into. We’ve appointed additional agricultural attachés to increase our diplomatic footprint in our embassies.

An agricultural attaché is somebody who concentrates fully on food access, opening up new markets and maintaining existing markets.

“Our latest appointment was to Seoul in South Korea where we’re in a detailed process of looking for beef market access there which would be a very big market for us if that was to be successful,” the minister added.

“So between the embassy network, our agricultural attachés and the Bord Bia team that are all around the world, we work very closely on developing those new markets.”

Brexit fallout

The minister added that Britain remains a very important customer of Irish food and drink and that is a relationship he wants to continue developing post-Brexit.

“We want to continue to have Irish food and drink produce on British shelves and are working very hard right now to maintain that space on those shelves post the first of January.

In the video below, Minister Heydon tells AgriLand that while Britain is important to Ireland, there are many other markets which can be developed:

Support for Irish agriculture

While talks between the EU and the UK are continuing at the 11th hour this week, Minister Heydon said he feels that Ireland’s interests are being strongly considered.

“We are very well placed. Ireland’s interests are very well understood by Michel Barnier; but also in terms of looking at the €5 billion Brexit Adjustment Fund to make the strongest case possible. It is for countries most affected and we would argue that we’re the most affected,” the minister said.

There is no doubting our place and that’s why it’s really important from the political and diplomatic level within the EU circle that we put our best food forward and we make our case strongly. We’re using every avenue, every contact politically to do that.

“Let’s say in the area of beef, if our beef was to be displaced out of Britain, that would have a very significant impact on European supply of beef worldwide so it’s actually in European countries’ interest that we maintain our place on British shelves, otherwise there will be a lot of Irish beef going to the rest of Europe and that would cause problems for other beef-producing nations because there would be an oversupply then.

Minister Heydon told AgriLand (in the video below) that one way or another, trade with our nearest neighbour is going to change on January 1:

“If there is a last-minute deal and we still very much hope there will be – things will change on January 1; there will be checks; there will be an interruption to the free-flow that we’re used to and that’s why we need Irish companies that either trade to, through or from the UK to get Brexit-ready,” said the minister.