Minister Creed appoints Tom Arnold to Chair the Committee to develop Ireland’s Agri-Food Strategy to 2030
The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed T.D., today announced the appointment of Mr. Tom Arnold to chair the committee which will develop Ireland’s Agri-Food Strategy to 2030. Minister Creed said “I am delighted that Tom Arnold has accepted my invitation to this role. Given his distinguished career both nationally and internationally, as well as the respect with which he is held both within and outside the sector, I believe that he will make an excellent Chair. His familiarity and expertise in agriculture, food and economics will serve him well in this important role over the coming months”.
Agri-Food Strategy to 2030
Food Wise 2025 is the current ten-year strategy for the agri-food sector, in a series of rolling ten-year plans that have been in place since 2000. They are renewed every five years and preparations began earlier with year with public consultation and more recently, an ‘Open Policy Debate’ which saw over 400 stakeholders come together at the Aviva Stadium to consider a range of issues facing the sector. The next stage in the process for developing the strategy will be the appointment of a stakeholder Committee to draft the strategy. It is intended that the strategy will be finalised by the summer of 2020.
Tom Arnold is Chair of a Task Force on Rural Africa established by the European Commission. His previous roles include Director-General of the Institute of International and European Affairs, Chair of the Irish Constitutional Convention and Chief Executive of Concern Worldwide. He has served on a number of governmental and non-governmental bodies at national, European and international levels including the UN Millennium Project’s Hunger Task Force, the Irish Hunger Task Force, the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund, and the Irish Government’s Commission on Taxation, amongst others. In his earlier career, he was Chief Economist and Assistant Secretary-General with the Irish Department of Agriculture and Food, and Chair of the OECD Committee for Agriculture. He has a degree in agricultural economics from University College Dublin and has Masters’s degrees from Leuven University and from Trinity College, Dublin.
