First up on Inside Business this week is the plight of independent Irish breweries, who, like so many now, are finding the cost of doing business to be far too high.

This is despite an explosion in the popularity of craft beers here in the last decade.

What costs are forcing some operators out of business? How are they coping with competition from far larger, commercial breweries? And will these increasing costs be passed onto consumers?

To get into all this, host Cliff Taylor was joined by Irish Times Business Reporter Hugh Dooley and founder and chief executive of the Carlow Brewing Company, Seamus O’Hara.

Plus, it’s a deal decades in the making and would seem to make sense in the context of the aggressive tariffs imposed on the EU and Latin American countries by Donald Trump.

And the expectation is that the EU Commission will try to ratify the Mercosur trade deal despite push back from several EU countries, not least Ireland.

But why is the trade deal so divisive and what impact could it have here if it goes ahead?

Irish Times acting Europe Correspondent Jack Power joined Cliff on the line from Brussels.

Produced by John Casey with JJ Vernon on sound.

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