Camogie captain Una in big win off the field
WEXFORD Camogie captain Una Sinnott was part of a winning team off the pitch recently after UCD were crowned winners of the fifth annual Great Agri-Food debate in Belfast’s Queens University.
Organised by Dawn Meats and McDonald’s Ireland, the event saw six third level colleges taking part and this was the first time it was hosted north of the border. In the familiar role of captain, Una led the UCD team at the debate and saw them overcome WIT in a hotly contested and well-informed final on the topic of ‘Global free trade, not subsidies, will deliver a sustainable future for European agriculture’.
Una wasn’t the only one flying the flag for Wexford either, as her opposite number Danielle Mulligan who captained the WIT team hails from near Carnew.
Victors UCD, now four-time winners of the Great Agri Food Debate, vigorously opposed the motion, with captain Una Sinnott leading her team in arguments that spanned three pillars of environment, economy and society to make their case. Carefully making the distinction between global free trade and free trade agreements, they stressed the need to ‘meet the needs of the present without compromising on the needs of the future’, warning that global free trade would lead to a race to the bottom, not least with regard to environmental sustainability.
Further they cautioned of the impact of global free trade on the fabric of rural communities and reminded the proposing team that we are the natural custodians of our land, and without subsidies, ‘we will be the destroyers of our lands’.
In response, WIT, led by
Danielle Mulligan in proposing the motion, maintained that via subsidies, loss making farm practises are being artificially sustained, with subsidies acting as a ‘scaffolding’ mechanism. They firmly proposed that free trade is the only option for a sustainable future for farming, arguing that subsidies favour big business over farmers, and claiming that ‘multi-billion euro companies are receiving multi-million euro CAP payments’. They called for increased efforts to source new markets globally.
Una and UCD were delighted with the win and to head back south with the top prize.