Almost 1,000 jobs were lost in Ireland’s agri-food sector last year due to the negative impact of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty around Brexit.

Announcing its end of year report, Enterprise Ireland said employment numbers among the food industry clients it supports fell by almost 2% last year to just over 62,000 jobs.

That’s a decline of 954 jobs compared with 2019, when agri-food companies supported by Enterprise Ireland employed just over 63,000 people.

Small increase in dairy sector

Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal, Enterprise Ireland CEO Julie Sinnamon said the drop in employment levels in the agri-food sector was down to the impact of COVID-19, as well as the major uncertainty created by Brexit in the final quarter of the year.

Within the overall food sector, Sinnamon said the Irish dairy sector actually saw a small increase in employment numbers last year.

However, job losses in all other sectors of the food industry, such as meat processing, meant there was an overall decline in employment levels in Ireland’s agri-food sector last year.

“The food industry is by far the largest sector of Irish enterprise,” said Sinnamon.

“Not only that, but it’s critically important to Ireland’s regional economy because most of the jobs in the food sector are outside of Dublin and located in regional areas of the country,” she added.

Ireland’s agri-food sector accounts for almost 30% of the 220,600 jobs supported by Enterprise Ireland and accounts for more than half (55%) of all exports by Enterprise Ireland client companies.

Brexit

Sinnamon said there was enormous concern in the food industry in the final quarter of the year over Brexit, but said there was huge relief when the EU-UK trade deal was finally agreed on Christmas Eve.

However, Sinnamon said the Brexit uncertainty from October to December had resulted in significant stockpiling of food by UK buyers in the lead-up to Christmas.

As a result, Sinnamon said the level of business between Irish food exporters and UK customers was noticeably quiet over the last 10 days and that Irish ports were much quieter.

She added that business volumes between Irish food exporters and the UK market should return to a more normalised level in the next week or two once the stockpiles of food in the UK are worked through.

Customs

Sinnamon added that many Irish exporters have been caught off guard by the new customs requirements for shipping to the UK.

“The UK is now a third country export market and that means there are customs procedures that must be adhered to that weren’t there before,” said Sinnamon.

The Enterprise Ireland boss said her agency had trained almost 1,000 customs officers over recent months and is able to subsidise the cost of employing these customs experts for its clients to the tune of €9,000 per person.

Sinnamon urged companies exporting to the UK that needed assistance in managing the new customs arrangement to make use of this support.