ONE OF the downsides of Brexit is that the EU farm commissioner is largely disengaged from agriculture in the UK.

That is unfortunate, since as a commissioner Phil Hogan, like Franz Fischler and Ray MacSharry in the past, really understands farming – and takes on board farmer concerns. He is blunt, quick-witted and generally ready to give sensible, rather than political answers. He is a safe pair of hands at the wheel in Brussels.

That is something farmers in Scotland will envy, whether they voted Leave or Remain, as we drift rudderless on agricultural policy at Westminster.

Like any politician, Hogan is confident on home ground, and this week he was in Dublin for a major conference, organised by the Irish Farmers Association, on Brexit. It is often forgotten how big a hit Brexit will be for Ireland. Uniquely, it will have a land border with the UK, with all the complications that will bring for agricultural trade that operates on an all-island basis. This was the case long before the UK and Ireland joined the EU, but a hard border as part of a hard Brexit would change all that.

More importantly for Ireland, food is its biggest export and the UK its biggest market. It cannot afford a Brexit that would block tariff-free access. It is often forgotten that the UK is a net importer of food, making it a prime market for the EU-27 after Brexit.

As well as Ireland, these include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. They need a deal, and that is why those that present the Single Market debate as the UK seeking concessions are wrong. Like the cold war rhetoric, now making a comeback, the deal is based around mutually assured destruction as the price of failure.

The Irish, in particular, are avoiding saying how serious Brexit already is for them. Farmers in the UK have gained since last June, because of the plunge in the value of sterling against the euro. That widened again this week, after it looked as though a pro-EU and pro-euro centrist politician in France, Emmanuel Macron, will secure the presidency next month.

If you are a supplier to the UK from the eurozone, you are still receiving the same price in sterling, but that now translates into a lot less in euro. Ireland, for example, has estimated that its beef industry has lost €80 million to date because of this – and that is just one commodity from one country.

Hogan is certainly blunt, and in Ireland he talked about the 'loony voices' in the UK advocating that Brexit should be based on a departure from the EU with no bilateral trade deal in place. That would see the UK forced into World Trade Organisation tariff levels, which would mean no trade.

The UK could, of course, impose the same tariffs on the EU-27, but doing so would drive up food prices for consumers, and that is not something the government will contemplate.

Hogan stuck to the Brussels line that the UK could not cherry pick the parts of the Single Market it wanted, while ignoring freedom of movement and a financial contribution to the EU. He claimed that in the UK those with 'crazy ideas' about a hard Brexit without an EU-27 trade deal are now losing the argument with the UK public. He however deemed a non-starter any suggestion that there could be a separate bilateral trade deal between the UK and Ireland. He made clear that the UK could only deal with the EU and not with individual member states.

With his good cop hat on, Hogan said that with the triggering of Article 50, reality had come into play. He said he was confident that would deliver an 'ambitious and far-reaching' bilateral trade deal between the UK and the EU-27. Depressingly for his hosts, the Irish Farmers Association, Hogan stressed there could be no pain-free outcome from Brexit for Ireland, because its biggest market for food would become a third country outside the EU.

It has been estimated that a hard Brexit would cost the Irish food industry €1.5 billion a year, with €600 million of that coming from the dairy sector alone. That is why the 'ambitious and far-reaching' trade deal referred to by Hogan would be a win-win outcome for the UK and the post-Brexit EU 27. The challenge is convincing politicians to see that.