Green Party Asked Members for their questions about CETA, this is mine:
CETA is an agreement with Canada
Canada's main interest in Ireland is our Seaweed Resources.
How can it not a catastrophe to ratify the CETA deal when
1) the Government has already significantly contravened the trade agreement.
a) by selling resources, mechanical harvesting rights and licenses and even ownership of some of Ireland's coastline to Canadian Corporations.
b) The Canadians are now looking to start harvesting
c) The government promised (and sold) resources to the Canadian companies that belong to Irish seaweed harvesters.
d) Since the previous government sold the resources, the Oireachtas Committee Committed to Protecting the Rights of Traditional Seaweed Harvesting License Holders.
e) Mechanical harvesting was tried and had to be stopped within days as it was so destructive to the marine environment.
f) Secretly, some mechanical harvesting has been started elsewhere.
g) The government intends to shaft the Irish Seaweed Industry: It wants to plus it will be required to, by CETA, to honour the agreement with the Canadian buyers.
h) This is evidenced by the National Seaweed Mapping Project at which thousands of pounds has thrown. I have in writing that the government does not want the traditional seaweed harvesters even approached about mapping the seaweed they are responsible for - they should of course be the 'ground truthers' with whom the drone footage should be compared to the species and quantities people actually measure/assess on the ground. They do not want those previously licensed stretches on the coast, on that map. They do not even want the map on open sourced software, it has to be private, secure and commercially designed (the tender proposal by Marine institute and Small Innovation wrote). Only the purchasers will know what is where and no mention/protection of individual inherited rights. I know this as I applied to map the seaweed using open sourced software provided by the National Biodiversity Data Centre and recruiting the 6,500 seaweed harvesters as the ground-truthers.
i) No mention/protection of how much is harvested and therefore like the fisheries the foreign interests will not pay a tax, or generate any sort of income for Ireland or work.
j) With private maps created only by drone footage, there will be no oversight of environmental impact.
k) If the government try and say sorry, you can't after all mechanically harvest or have access to that stretch of coast or ask for a tax that was not going to be charged to start with - all these things will 'affect the corporations' profits' and they can sue our government.
l) Plus you've rendered the only resource Ireland has left to foreign management and will need to support Ireland's coastal dwellers.
m) If instead the government got the existing licenses and licensed areas on the map now, they could get the incoming purchasers or themselves to pay a handsome redundancy/pension for their ongoing lost earnings. We could also train them up as stewards of the resource and coastal environment - I have already written a Fetac Level 5 Climate Action Leadership course to qualify our traditional seaweed harvesting license holders For all my climate action leadership training courses, see my website www.green-business-consultancy.ie
n) Beween 50 and 80% of our oxygen comes from the sea and we already have just given licenses for one 800 hectares of shell fish farming - where there is already a problem with toxicity.
o) The traditional seaweed harvesters must be left in control of their stretch, making an income from what is taken and also (like forestry) receive grants to put in and manage mobile carbon sump seaweed forests.
p) Ireland will be instantly sued and bankrupted if they take any stance for people or environment.
How is that not a disaster?
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