Ireland hopes to export more "safe, green" agricultural products to China as the two countries have great potential for cooperation in this field, Irish Ambassador to China Paul Kavanagh has said.
"Ireland wants to develop a close political relationship with China on the basis of mutual trust. Within the European Union (EU), Ireland is a friend of China," Kavanagh told Xinhua on Sunday, as Liu Yunshan, a senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC), kicked off a three-day official visit to the country.
He said Ireland and China had witnessed frequent exchanges of high-level visits since 2012, adding that mutual political trust between the two countries had been continuously strengthened.
"This is the third year in a row that we have very senior Chinese visitors come to Ireland. We are pleased," said Kavanagh, who returned to his country to prepare for Liu's visit.
"Our political relationship is very close... There are more than a dozen Irish political level visits, senior level visits to China, and a significant number of Chinese visits going back to Ireland," he added.
In the ambassador's view, the two countries' close political relations are rooted in their similar historical background and development process.
"Ireland had a colonial history... That is an important mental or psychological background dimension to our relations with China," he said. "We can understand perhaps more easily the history that your people had gone through. And I think China understands Irish people."
Meanwhile, he said, both Ireland and China are striving for economic transition.
"We are not a country that is wealthy for centuries and generations..., and we are economically quite successful in the same way that China has been," Kavanagh said.
He noted that close political relations have paved the way for the two sides' increasing trade and economic exchanges, especially in the agricultural field.
"When it comes to agriculture, Ireland has a very strong reputation for high quality safe food," he said, adding that 10 percent of the world's infant formula milk powder is produced in the country.
According to the ambassador, Ireland will invest massively in the dairy industry when the EU lifts quota limits on dairy production in 2015, stating that within five years the country will increase production by 50 percent, and double it after.
Kavanagh said dairy was a good example of where "China's interest and Ireland's interest coincide."
"So you have a country like China... who has almost miraculously raised living standards of hundreds of millions of people. Their appetite for food is growing. And Ireland is the food island, is the green island," he said.
Despite the debt crisis in Europe, Ireland's agricultural exports to China grew by 40 percent last year. "We fully expect within three years China will be our second largest market in the whole world for food and drink, second only to UK," he said.
The ambassador also voiced his hope that more Chinese enterprises would choose Ireland as an investment destination.
Thanks to its favorable business enviroment and highly-educated workforce, "we see Ireland as a perfect landing point for Chinese investment in Europe," he said.
