Ten Years to Say Yes. Is Ireland Serious About Trade?

Imagine asking a customer to sign a contract, celebrating the relationship for a decade, and still waiting for their signature.

Welcome to European trade diplomacy.

Canada is pushing Europe to finish ratifying the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, better known as CETA. Mark Carney called for the remaining EU countries to ratify it in September. Ireland remains among them.

The agreement was signed on 30 October 2016. As its tenth anniversary approaches, the awkward question is whether Ireland’s enthusiasm for open trade extends to finishing the paperwork.

For a country that sells itself as an international business gateway, that is an uncomfortable place to be.

The door is already open

First, an important correction to the obvious outrage.

Irish businesses have not spent ten years locked out of Canada while politicians searched for a pen.

CETA has applied provisionally since September 2017. The European Commission says 98% of tariff lines were eliminated when provisional application began. Businesses already benefit from much of the agreement.

Full ratification matters, however. Provisional application excludes significant elements of investment protection, including the Investment Court System. Full entry into force requires completion of ratification across the EU; Ireland cannot deliver that alone.

So this is not a story about switching trade on.

It is about completing a commitment, settling the outstanding safeguards and giving a long-running partnership a firmer foundation.

“Provisional” is an odd word to keep attached to a strategic relationship for nine years.

There was a real legal problem

Blaming everything on political laziness would make a punchier article. It would also duck the substance.

In November 2022, Ireland’s Supreme Court found that ratification was constitutionally precluded under the existing legal arrangements. The dispute concerned how investment tribunal awards would interact with Ireland’s constitutional order. That deserved scrutiny.

Investment protection raises legitimate questions. How do you protect investors against unfair treatment while preserving a government’s ability to regulate in the public interest? What oversight should domestic courts retain?

Those are questions to answer, rather than objections to wave away.

But the position has moved.

On 17 June 2026, the Government announced that the Arbitration (Amendment) Act had been signed into law. It introduced a procedure for enforcing investment tribunal awards with safeguards addressing the Supreme Court’s concerns.

The Government described it as removing a significant obstacle to ratification.

Fair enough. Now explain the remaining steps, who owns them and when they will happen.

Businesses recognise the difference between managing a problem and repeatedly reporting that it exists.

A partnership worth taking seriously

The commercial relationship is substantial.

According to Global Affairs Canada’s bilateral figures, merchandise trade between Canada and Ireland reached C$6 billion in 2025. Ireland supplied C$4.9 billion of that total.

This is an established trading relationship with customers, suppliers and capital already committed.

Across the wider EU relationship, Canada reported on 22 October that merchandise trade had grown by more than 78% compared with pre-CETA levels, while services trade had grown by nearly 90%.

Those headline increases do not prove CETA caused every additional dollar of trade. Prices, demand and other economic changes also matter.

But they describe a relationship worth developing.

Canada’s trade minister was in Dublin this week to discuss that relationship, including cooperation on supply chains, critical minerals and digital trade.

Ireland should bring more than anniversary hospitality to the conversation.

A treaty cannot rescue a badly managed deal

There is another uncomfortable truth here.

Governments can negotiate market access. Businesses still have to turn it into profitable transactions.

Consider a hypothetical Irish equipment manufacturer that already sells internationally and wins a Canadian order.

The commercial team agrees a price. The buyer requests a different delivery arrangement. A revised specification circulates. The freight forwarder quotes against an earlier version. Finance works from the original payment schedule.

Then someone asks which Incoterm was actually agreed.

The treaty has done its job. The transaction is coming apart in the inbox.

Before celebrating the order, the business needs clear answers:

• Does the product qualify for CETA’s preferential tariff treatment, and what evidence supports that?

• Which Incoterm, named place and version govern delivery responsibilities and risk transfer?

• Who handles customs clearance, and which costs are included in the price?

• Which specifications, documents and payment milestones have both parties accepted?

A Canadian destination does not automatically make a shipment eligible for CETA preferences. An attractive selling price does not automatically produce an attractive margin.

Access creates the opportunity. Execution determines what survives.

Finish the agreement. Modernise the transaction.

Encouragingly, the next conversation is already under way.

Canada and the EU are negotiating a separate Digital Trade Agreement. Canada’s announcement ahead of the Dublin meetings identifies regulatory predictability and interoperability as intended benefits.

The direction makes sense. Trade policy and business processes need to advance together.

For businesses already trading internationally, the practical priorities are straightforward:

• Make changes to commercial terms visible to everyone affected.

• Keep accepted terms and supporting documents connected to the transaction.

• Bring freight forwarders and financial service providers into the relevant workflow.

• Preserve a usable history of decisions, responsibilities and approvals.

That is the problem iTradeDigital is being built to address: helping businesses of all sizes move beyond disconnected emails, PDFs and spreadsheets towards collaborative deal negotiation and management, with a single source of truth for each trade.

No platform can ratify a treaty. No treaty can keep your transaction records straight.

Both require someone to take responsibility for completion.

Ireland should complete its ratification process with clear safeguards and a public timetable. Businesses should examine whether their own trading processes deserve the same scrutiny.

After all, there is little point demanding that governments finish a ten-year-old agreement if your team cannot establish which version of yesterday’s deal the customer accepted.