Ireland's Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon, has told the Dáil that the EU single market and the Common Agricultural Policy are "the critical mechanisms for ensuring food security throughout the EU and Ireland", as climate and extreme weather create risks for all EU producers, Agriland reported.

He was answering Deputy Robert O'Donoghue, who asked whether the department had assessed how exposed supply chains are to climate risks such as drought, flooding, extreme heat, water scarcity and changing growing conditions. Heydon said that once the single market is considered, Ireland's sufficiency estimates are much higher than domestic self-sufficiency ratios suggest, particularly for vegetables and cereals, and that the long-standing agri-food trade with the UK strengthens that position.

The minister said a mid-term review of the Food Vision 2030 strategy is under way and will consider food security. Ireland's comparative advantage in grass-based livestock will stay at the core of its agri-food output, he said, but there are advantages in diversifying, and a road map for horticulture has been agreed in the National Strategy for Horticulture 2023-2027.

His department administers the EU aid scheme for producer organisations, which paid €8.7 million to five organisations last year, as well as national investment-aid schemes that help commercial horticulture growers make on-farm capital investments.

Heydon said Ireland is not unusual in specialising its production and trade and that there is limited room to replace imports of products such as exotic fruit or to meet year-round demand for some commodities. In 2025 Ireland exported produce worth €492.5 million (258,392 tonnes) and imported €1.97 billion worth (about 1.19 million tonnes), a trade deficit of €1.47 billion and 961,911 tonnes. The report was written by the Agriland News Team.

Photo: Sean Kelly MEP / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Source: Agriland