NI farmers demand Brexit clarity from MPs
THE European Union has created fear and uncertainty among farmers in Northern Ireland by treating the region as a political football in Brexit negotiations, MPs were told yesterday.
Co Tyrone poultry farmer Thomas Douglas said it was time for the EU to “wise up”, suggesting political posturing was preventing a workable solution to cross-border trade post-Brexit.
Mr Douglas, who was one of a number of farmers who outlined their concerns to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, also claimed Conservative and Labour MPs in Britain were not concerned about the impact of Brexit on this side of the Irish Sea, and stressed the need for power-sharing to be restored at Stormont.
Committee members travelled from Westminster to Belfast yesterday to hear evidence from farmers from a range of different agricultural sectors.
Mr Douglas told the evidence session at Stormont: “The biggest thing, and I think all of us would agree, is we need to know what is going to happen in Brexit. Whether it’s good, bad or indifferent, let us know so we can organise the Northern Ireland agriculture to deal with it.
“Europe is playing a game, let’s be quite honest.
“Europe is playing a political game using the Northern Ireland border as the football and they are using the Republic of Ireland as one team and the United Kingdom as the other team, to put it in a football perspective, and letting them kick the ball back and forwards and that is suiting Europe at the minute and the European negotiators. And it’s time that people in the UK parliament tell the European negotiators to wise up here.
“Because they are putting the fear and the uncertainty into Northern Ireland because they are using it as a football.”
Fellow Co Tyrone farmer Malcolm Keys, a major pig producer, raised concern that a Brexit deal could see Northern Ireland operate under a different trade regime from the rest of the United Kingdom.
“What we would like to see soon is clarity of what this Brexit is going to mean because as pig producers our main market is the UK market, the UK retailer in mainland UK which is the premier market for us and it must be protected after Brexit,” he said.
Fermanagh farmer Peter Gallagher, who has a business half a mile from the border, said protecting the European market was just as important.
“We would be very reliant on cross-border trade and would be very concerned about any barriers to free movement of animals trade and anything of that nature,” he said.
Cereal producer Allan Chambers expressed concern that EU subsidies in the form of the single farm payment would not be maintained after Brexit.
But DUP MP Ian Paisley said it was “unthinkable” that state subsidies would not continue.
“We are talking about a £20 billion industry, we are talking about food security for the whole of the UK — you guys are at the heart of that,” he said.
“No Government, it would be madness, it would be suicide for a Government to walk away from that.”