Coveney urged to be proactive on Russia food ban

Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney has been urged to do more to deal with the impact of the Russian food ban at home, rather than depend on the EU to sort things out.

Fianna Fáil’s horticultural spokesperson Seamus Kirk insisted that the Government was not doing enough to deal with the situation.

While EU ambassadors met to discuss the situation yesterday, the Agriculture Department could not say when Ministers of Mr Coveney’s rank would convene to discuss the sanctions.

Mr Kirk said the Government was not being proactive enough in dealing with the situation which will hit Irish producers hard.

“Clearly the EU has an important role to play in all this, but we need to take a lot more initiatives at home, rather than just rely on Brussels.

“With the EU states being unable to export to Russia, that means there is a lot more produce on the market now and everyone is competing with each other and looking for new countries to supply.

“We need to be putting a lot more resources into Bord Bia so that they can help producers and actively work to open up new markets.

“Setting-up a telephone helpline as the Minister has done is not good enough.

“We need to look to ourselves and at what we can do at home, as well as at the EU level.”

Mr Coveney was forced to deny that the Government had presented a muddled picture of how the Russian ban on a range of food and drink imports would impact on Ireland after Bord Bia said the country would lose some €70m in trade as a result.

Mr Coveney has now revised that figure down to €8.2m after he said pig meat sales, which had already been banned due to a health scare in the Baltic states, had been included in the Bord Bia calculations.

The minister said that €136m of the €235m exported to Russia last year would not be affected by the sanctions and the pig meat ban.

The minister said he wanted the European Commission to provide aid to Irish producers hit by the Russian move.

Russia imposed the 12- month ban on the importation of many food and drink items from the EU, US, Australia and other countries in revenge for Western sanctions against Moscow after its intervention in the upheaval in Ukraine.

EU foreign minister are due to meet in Milan next week to discuss the deteriorating situation with Russia over the Ukraine, and the Agriculture Department said Mr Coveney was in “constant contact” with European counterparts regarding the food and drink sanctions.