Walsh strongly defends CAP reform
Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh said he believed Ireland has got the very best menu of options now available.
“In a few weeks times, when the European Commission has finalised the legal texts. I will sit down with the farming organisations and we will decide on the road map,” he said.
Mr Walsh said he believed Ireland came out well from the Luxembourg negotiations from an extremely weak starting position.
“While it might hurt our pride, Ireland has only three votes out of 87 on the Farm Council, which likes, however, to get consensus rather than bulldozing something through.
“From the outside I entered a close alliance with the French, a powerful country whose president Jacques Chirac, a former Farm Minister from a rural background, takes an inordinately close interest in farming.
“We also had liaison and meetings with an informal group of five member states, comprised of the French, Spanish, Portuguese Luxembourg and ourselves.
"We all had commonality of interest in ensuring that we got a good deal. If we were on our own we could have been easily isolated.”
Minister Walsh said he believes the outcome of the negotiations means that the benefits of the Agenda 2000 agreement have been retained.
“We are highly dependent on a strong and viable CAP and we are not serving our own interests if we bury our heads in the sand and ignore the external threats and challenges,” he said.
They could look ahead with confidence and plan for the future in a stable policy environment.
“My priority now is to manage the transition from the old to the new regime so as to ensure a smooth transfer and enable Irish agriculture to exploit the new opportunities to the full,” he said.
