EU Budgets
Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01
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Thomas Byrne (FF), Meath East

Farmers are a very significant focus of the MFF. They are hugely significant focus. Before our Presidency, we put forward our priorities and briefed Members of the Dáil and of the European Parliament on them. Those priorities we set out included agriculture and a real commitment to European engagement abroad. They also included competitiveness. What is competitiveness about? It is about making sure that we keep good-paying jobs in the European Union. That includes farming and small and medium enterprises. It also includes big businesses that employ people and provide essential manufacturing for the European Union. On cohesion, one of the priorities we negotiated into the negotiating document before we took on the Presidency was the PEACEPLUS programme, a unique fund that is jointly funded by the British Government, the Irish Government and the European Union. We succeeded in getting that into the negotiating document. That is cohesion funding in action. It shows where the Irish Government's priorities were before we got the Presidency, taking on this honest broker role.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-10-01