When Ireland joined the EEC (as it was in 1973), we were an agricultural economy, and the vast bulk of our exports went to the UK. We had little or no access to other European markets. Since we joined the EU that has changed radically; our main market has grown from 56million people in one country to 500 million people in twenty-seven Member States.
We’ve benefited from membership because agricultural commodity prices tend to be higher in the EU than in the rest of the world. It’s complicated, but the end result is that the agricultural sector made nearly a billion euro in 2007 alone because it was selling into a market with good prices.
As well as opening up a huge and profitable market for our goods, membership of the Union has brought funding. Huge amounts of funding - funding which other members have provided to help improve our agricultural sector. Between 1973 and 2007 we have been given €43 billion. That’s the equivalent of €10,000 for every man, woman and child in Ireland.
From 2007 to 2013, we’ll receive another €12 billion. That’s €12,000,000,000!!!
But the big gain we’ve made from EU membership isn’t about money, it’s more about partnership.
- Being one of 27 Member States puts us in a much stronger position to deal with things like the World Trade Organisation talks. The rest of the world doesn’t spend a lot of time worrying about what Ireland wants, but it does care about what 500 million people in the EU want and we can influence that. We have a great track record of influencing what the EU does in relation to farming and agriculture.
- The ban on the import of Brazilian beef across the EU was a result of lobbying from Ireland (and Irish farmers) and it benefited not just Ireland but Germany and the UK as well.
- Ireland secured an additional €500 million in rural development funding for Ireland in the 2005 Financial Perspectives Agreement.
- We secured a compensation package worth over €310 million for the reform of the EU sugar policy.
- We achieved the removal of the degressivity proposals of the 2003 CAP reform. It’s boring and technical, but the end result was that Single Farm Payments, which are so important to Irish farmers, were not reduced.
- Ireland was also at the heart of securing the agreement of the Commission and the Council to allow members to use unspent Single Farm Payment funds (in the context of the Health Check of the CAP negotiations). Boring and technical, but important to farming families.
- We secured agreement to pay Irish farmers more than €600m in Single Farm Payments at least 6 weeks earlier than provided for in the Regulation and than in other Member States, in each of the past three years 2006, 2007 and 2008. In response to pressure from Ireland and other Member States, in view of the current economic downturn, the European Commission agreed that the Single Farm Payment could be paid early in 2009 also. This means that almost €900m will be paid to Irish farmers in mid-October. These decisions are of enormous benefit for the farmers involved and the wider agriculture sector.