A longstanding ban on imports of live cattle from Ireland into Egypt has been lifted, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern announced during a visit to the Egyptian capital yesterday.
Speaking after meeting senior ministers, Mr Ahern said the Egyptian government had decided that trade in live cattle from Ireland, worth a potential €90 million, could now resume.
Commenting to reporters, Mr Ahern said that, on arrival in Cairo, three different ministers in the Egyptian government, dealing with trade, foreign affairs and agriculture, had informed him that a cabinet meeting the previous day had decided to remove the ban.
He was told that, as far as the Egyptian authorities were concerned, "the health and all of the attendant issues were now in order".
The Egyptians had discussed this with the Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan, during the visit by President Mubarak to Dublin last month.
The Egyptian government told him yesterday that "they will be in contact with our embassy, first thing on Monday morning" and would liaise with Ambassador Gerard Corr to provide the formal approval in writing.
"As far as we're concerned, it [the Egyptian market] would be open immediately.
"Then it's up to Irish companies if they are able, from a competitive viewpoint, to deal in the Egyptian market.
"This was one of our biggest markets a number of years ago. It may be hard to get back into the market because they obviously had to source beef from elsewhere but we have been working behind the scenes to try and get this reopened, as we did in quite a number of other countries."
The Egyptians had told him that, "we would be treated like any other country, it was a matter now on the basis of competitiveness and whether or not Irish companies were now interested in coming into this market". Egypt banned the importation of beef from Ireland and other EU member states in November 2000 in response to the BSE outbreak.