Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 17 January 2019
208. Deputy Charlie McConalogue asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the countries to which Ireland exported food and drink products to in 2017 and 2018; the volume and value of such exports by country, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2281/19]
Amharc ar fhreagraIrish Agri-food exports and imports are broken down into categories identified and agreed by my Department and the Central Statistics Office. Products and Raw goods are categorised using combined nomenclature codes, a European harmonised system used to classify goods for customs and trade purposes. These categories include items such as Forestry and Animal Hides and Skins, along with traditional Food and Beverage products.
In 2018 as part of a wider exercise in relation to trade, my Department undertook an exercise examining the way in which we classify Agri-food sector products. This exercise aims to provide an up-to-date and detailed statistical representative of Ireland’s Agri-food sector. The exercise resulted in the addition of a number of combined nomenclature codes, mainly in the forestry and wood-based products categories and the deletion of other codes relating to waste paper products.
This brought the total of Irish Agri-food exports to approximately €13.8 billion in 2017, including non-edible products such as forestry, animal foodstuffs and animal hides and skins (which account for approximately €1.5billion of the total).
In 2017 Irish Agri-Food goods were exported to over 180 countries worldwide; increased output and the consistency of global demand for key products were the driving force behind these results.
Full year figures for 2018 are not yet available. However projections based on exports from January – November indicate that total value of Agri-food exports for the full year 2018 will be down between 1.5-2% on full-year 2017 figures while it is estimated that the volume of exports for 2018 will be up by around 3-3.5% compared to 2017.
The table in the following link provides a full breakdown of export destinations in 2017 in respect of both value and volume of goods based on CSO data. The provisional 2018 export data from the CSO will be available in mid-February 2019 with final 2018 export data available in mid-March 2019.
