Ireland is well known as a food exporting nation, but the country also has to import significant quantities of food and drink to meet domestic demand. The ratio of food exports to imports, by value, is generally around €1.50 of exports for every €1 of imports (see figure 1).

This overall trade performance is certainly impressive, with Bord Bia data showing the value of Irish food and drink exports have increased by more than 50% over the last decade. Digging into the data, we can see that much of this growth has been driven by the dairy sector, which saw a 250% increase in value between 2015 and 2024.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) breaks down merchandise trade into several sub-categories, covering food, drink and animal feed. Taking data for 2024, the last full year available, we can get a breakdown of the sectoral data for different food groups.

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The largest sectoral trade surplus was in the meat and meat preparations category, which saw exports of €4.7bn and imports of €1.22bn, for a surplus of €3.48bn. The surplus in the dairy category was slightly lower at €3.16bn, but due to the overall lower level of imports in this category, the dairy sector had the best export:import ratio in the year, with €3.95 of exports for every €1 of imports.

The prepared consumer foods sector – which the CSO categorises as “miscellaneous edible products” – also ran a strong surplus of €1.24bn in 2024.

Unsurprisingly, Ireland has a trade deficit in food products which are not produced in large quantities in this country, such as tea, coffee and sugar. The single worst performance was in the vegetables and fruit category, which saw €457m in exports and €1.92bn in imports, meaning the country imported €4.18 of fruit and veg for every €1 of exports.

Ireland also ran a significant trade deficit in animal feed (see Figure 2 for full 2024 data).

Mercosur trade

The recent controversy around the Bord Bia chair centred on his company’s imports of beef from Brazil. Bord Bia said in a statement that the amount of beef involved is tiny, while Larry Murrin said it accounted for less than 1% of his company’s beef supply in 2025.

Overall food imports from South America are dominated by fruit and vegetables from Brazil, at €156m and animal feed from Argentina at €230m. There was €32.2m of meat and meat preparations imported from Brazil in 2024, which was almost entirely made up of chicken, a product in which Ireland is far from self-sufficient (see Figure 3).

Ireland’s food and drink exports to Mercosur in 2024 amounted to just over €13.3m almost entirely in the prepared consumer foods category. Total imports stood at €467.3m, meaning Ireland imported €35 of food and feed from Mercosur for every €1 the country exported to the region in 2024.

Overall, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay combined accounted for 4.3% of Ireland’s imports across all categories covered in 2024, while making up a tiny proportion of the country’s exports, at just 0.08% .

Comment

There is no question that Ireland is a successful food exporting nation. There is also no question that the country relies on imports to meet the deficits the country has in some key products such as animal feed, fruits and chicken.

While trade with Mercosur countries certainly is attracting a lot of attention at the moment, it is interesting to look at what the data says about the make-up of that trade.

The two dominant trades are fruit and vegetables from Brazil and animal feed from Argentina. Ireland’s tiny volume of exports to the region is almost entirely made up of prepared consumer foods.

Fundamentally, the data shows that, until now, the Mercosur region has been a source of products for which there is a shortage in Ireland. As a market for Irish product, it basically rounds to zero. This makes sense from an economics standpoint as the distance involved, tariffs, the different regulatory landscapes and even different languages are all barriers to trade.

The Mercosur trade deal will address the tariff issue and includes plenty of ink on removing regulatory barriers, but it will not move South America closer to Ireland, nor will it stop Brazilians speaking Portuguese or Argentinians speaking Spanish.

In the short- to medium- term, Ireland will continue to import food and feed products from the region, and depending on how the Mercosur deal progresses, might even seek some fresh export opportunities in the region.

However, for everyone in the food industry here, the markets that matter – both from an import and export perspective – are much closer to home.