Independent Ireland TD, Ken O'Flynn has said that the text of the EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement "remains unaltered".

According to Deputy O'Flynn, it has been confirmed that the EU Commission will tomorrow (September 3) transmit the EU-Mercosur and EU-Mexico trade agreements to the EU Council and the European Parliament.

He claims that despite intensive lobbying by Irish farm organisations, and "assurances by government" that beef farmers interests would be protected in any final text of the deal, the text of the agreement has "no revisions".

Deputy O'Flynn said: "We may as well have sent the vegan society to negotiate Irish beef farmers interests with respect to Mercosur for all the good that our shambolic and inept government representation achieved.

"This agreement is structurally flawed and politically indefensible and it represents a direct threat to Irish agriculture, to the integrity of European food standards, and to the sustainability of rural communities. To support it would be to abandon both principle and prudence.

"At the national level, Irish agriculture is now facing severe and unprecedented levels of disruption as it [the agreement] embeds a concession to flood the Irish and EU markets with at least 99,000t of beef and 180,000t of poultry from Mercosur states, along with significant quotas for sugar and ethanol," the TD added.

Since Irish beef exports are worth €2.8 billion annually, Deputy O'Flynn believes that the Mercosur agreement is a "structural displacement" of Irish producers.

He said: "At the international level, the deal starkly reveals that Ireland is now simply not even at the races when it comes to enormous trade deals of this kind. We are in effect little more than spectators to the work of an EU machine that is quite happy to surrender and deprioritise Irish interests without a second thought.

"The Mercosur agreement, in its present form, is incompatible with Ireland’s economic, environmental, and social interests. It must be opposed," Deputy O'Flynn added.