Tipperary farm leaders issue CAP review warnings

Concerns have been raised among the country’s two main farming organisations over this Thursday’s CAP budget meeting in Brussels.

Farmers will be “watching like hawks” the degree of determination and strategy that Leo Varadkar will bring to the talks, according to ICMSA president Pat McCormack

And IFA president Tim Cullinan warned that a leaked proposal of the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, that included cuts, would be a huge blow for Irish farmers.

He said that it must be rejected by An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar

Mr McCormack said that the Irish negotiators must bring two overriding principles with them.

“One is a domestic consideration. There may very well be another general election in the coming months and ICMSA will make it absolutely clear to the farming communities in rural constituencies who did, or did not, support the incomes and integrity of Irish farming and the wider €12bn agri-food system that depends on Irish farming,” he said.

Whether in Government or in Opposition, farmers had every right to expect our politicians and representatives to defend a properly funded CAP, he said.

At the very least, that meant maintaining current funding and in as close to the current ratio of Pillar I to Pillar II as possible, he said.

“Ireland has already indicated that we would be willing to increase our contribution and we must insist that other member states do the same to make good the deficit left by the UK’s departure,” said Mr McCormack, who farms at Greenane.

He pointed out that failure to do that actually vindicated the false Brexiteer argument and would encourage other reckless and false exit campaigns across the EU.

Mr McCormack went on to stress that it was the switch of funding to Pillar II and EU president Ursula von der Leyen’s reported insistence that 25 per cent of the overall Budget be devoted to the fight against climate change that should set alarm bells ringing loudest.

“What we have here – however it is dressed-up – is a policy of making the farmers pay for the so-called just transition.

“What president von der Leyen is actually saying is that the same farmers who paid through decades of falling margins and unfair practices by retail corporations that were tolerated, if not actually encouraged by the EU Commission, that those same farmers must now pay for the just transition to carbon neutrality and thus carry the can for everyone again,” said Mr McCormack.

He said that this was hugely important and equally hugely unfair.

Farmers had paid for everyone else for the last three decades of the “cheap food” policy and now that that had been finally pronounced unfair and environmentally damaging, the same farmers will have to pay for everyone again through cuts to their CAP payments.

“Farmers paid for everyone while they enjoyed superb quality food at below cost retail prices,, and now that that’s been pinpointed as a problem, farmers must pay everyone else’s share while our food production systems make this so-called just transition,” said the ICMSA president.

Mr McCormack said that ICMSA absolutely will not tolerate this and he was saying now that farmers were making their own just transition in terms of voting patterns.

“Politicians who imagined that they can get away again with passing the cost of these enormous economic and social developments back to the farmers - and the farmers alone - had better not be calling to our farms or our communities looking for electoral support,” warned Mr McCormack.

Meanwhile, Mr Cullinan said that the Taoiseach must now focus on the EU negotiations and not be distracted by the negotiations to form a new Government.

“I made it very clear at the IFA agm in late January that farmers could not take cuts. They need an increased CAP budget to at least take account of inflation and any additional asks being placed on farmers,” Mr Cullinan said.