Following the breakdown of last week's World Trade Organisation talks in Geneva, Tom Hanratty speaks to MEP Seán O Neachtain to find out exactly what this will mean for Galway.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is an international organisation dealing with the rules of trade between nations. The latest round of WTO talks collapsed last week over agricultural issues, but local MEP Seán Ó Neachtain explains, this will have no negative effects for Galway farmers.

Seá Ó Neachtain.

Seán Ó Neachtain is a member of the steering group within the European Parliament which deals with WTO issues. "The steering group is basically a sub-committee of the international trade committee," explains Mr Ó Neachtain.

"The International Trade Committee has taken over the international trade functions which were undertaken by the Industry Committee in the previous Parliamanet, of which I was a part.

"There's a member of each political group involved so that's why there are seven members. So I represent my political group, UEN on that, because of my previous experience with WTO," Mr Ó Neachtain adds.

The WTO talks collapsed in Geneva last Tuesday, 29 July, after a small group of Ministers could not agree on details of a new 'special safeguard mechanism,' for developing countries but the Fianna Fáil MEP is not at all surprised that this happened.

"I never believed that there was any basis for talks this time because all the signs were against agreement. All the big signs were that America were not going to row back on the support it had given to their agriculture sector, under what they called their Farm Bill, which is somewhat similar to our Common Agricultural Policy.

"In essence they could never achieve what the WTO wanted to," Mr Ó Neachtain continues. "It's coming up to the stage where this commission, and particularly Commissioner Mandelson, feels that it's a do or die situation and they wanted to show something for their five years in office."

Indeed, Ó Neachtain, like the IFA, is particularly critical of British Commissioner Peter Mandelson. "From the beginning I blamed Mandelson for steering WTO down the wrong path, and the reason why he did that is because the deal he put on the table as regards agriculture was totally undermining European and Irish agriculture.

"What Mandelson was doing really, was selling out European agriculture, and not just Ireland but France and other countries were objecting as well so for me the meeting looked totally wrong at this stage and I thought it was only being done to save face.

"If that tariff was reduced to what Mandelson proposed as a 60 per cent reduction, we would have a situation where the export of Irish beef, of which is most of it is exported in small quantities, would be undermined in the market by the huge challenge of the likes of Brazil, who produce beef very, very cheaply, by what you can nearly call slave labour."

Seán also believes that, while he never expected the WTO agreement to get the green light, the uncertainty surrounding the issue, had a huge impact in the outcome of the Lisbon Treaty Referendum.

"When campaigning for Lisbon, there was a lot of fear among the rural community that we would be sold out and if you look at the results they came in with a strong no from those rural communities, so the WTO did have a strong impact.