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Sunday February 16, 2025

Bad Brexit deal ‘could devastate’ NI farming sector

By Pa
September 04, 2020

BELFAST: Failure to strike a good post-Brexit trade deal could lead to the devastation of Northern Ireland’s farming industry, MLAs have been warned.

Farmers could quickly become uncompetitive if they are burdened by additional costs in a marketplace potentially flooded by cheaper imports from around the world, according to the boss of the Ulster Farmers’ Union.

Wesley Aston was among several agrifood representatives who painted a bleak picture of what the sector faces if effective post-Brexit trading arrangements are not agreed between the EU and UK before the end of the transition period in four months.

Members of the Northern Ireland Business Brexit Working Group were giving evidence to the Assembly’s agriculture committee, amid an impasse between the EU and UK on a trade deal.

“If we get the wrong sort of trade deal with the EU from a UK perspective, if the (Northern Ireland) protocol has to be implemented and then depending on how UK trade deals with third countries go, it could actually be devastating for us over here,” said Aston. “Just in terms of additional costs and actually having much more competition in the market. The simple solution for us is that we want the UK to have as close a future trading arrangement with the EU as it has at present.”

Aston said while the UK government had committed to “unfettered access” for NI traders to the GB market, the commercial reality might make it unviable for farmers to sell into Britain. “While, in theory, we will have unfettered legislative access, if there is additional hassle, additional costs, we will find ourselves at a disadvantage in comparison to our competitors.”

In the summer the NI Business Brexit Working Group wrote a report posing 67 questions to the government on how the Northern Ireland Protocol will operate. The protocol in the Withdrawal Treaty is the arrangement by which Northern Ireland continues to follow single market rules for goods and administers the EU’s customs code at its ports.

The government has acknowledged regulatory checks will be needed on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, with the expansion of infrastructure to screen animals and food products. But the government has insisted there will be no new physical customs infrastructure in Northern Ireland.

On Thursday, convenor of the working group Aodhan Connolly revealed it was still awaiting answers to 60 of the 67 questions. “What we’ve asked from the Westminster government is for technical solutions and detail,” he said. “What we’re asking the EU for is a generosity of spirit to allow those derogations and to allow those mitigations to actually happen. Unless we get that then there are going to be… significant cost rises.” Connolly, director of the NI Retail Consortium, said products may disappear from the shelves as it could become unprofitable for some suppliers to operate in Northern Ireland.