Vol. 519 No. 4
22 Ms O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development if he has evaluated the impact of the continued weakening of the euro against sterling on Irish agriculture; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13837/00]
Sterling has been strong against the euro since the start of EMU on 1 January 1999. The UK is a major destination for exports of Irish agricultural products and the strength of sterling improves our competitiveness on that market. Our total agrifood exports to the UK were close to two billion pounds in 1999, including £463 million of meat and £314 million of dairy exports.
While any improvement in our competitiveness is welcome, the impact of this type of currency fluctuation is limited by the nature of the contracts, based on long-term customer relationships, which increasingly dominate the food industry. For value added products in particular market share is determined by consumer preference on which currency fluctuations would only have a limited impact. In addition many of our larger food companies now limit their exposure to currency fluctuations by using appropriate hedging instruments.
The benefit to our exports must be balanced against some increase in imported input costs, but this impact is likely to be relatively small. For example, Ireland imported £80 million of animal feeds from the UK in 1999. This was however offset by exports to the UK of animal feed worth £64 million.
