Up to 900 commonage farmers attended a meeting in Clanree Hotel Letterkenny in Donegal tonight. Organisers see the meeting as a follow on from a similar meeting in Westport in recent weeks.
Speaking prior to the meeting Chairman for the night Henry O’Donnell said: “The meeting is to support the farmers in the west and to let farmers in Donegal know how serious the situation is for the future of their farm payments.”
Commonage farmers on the western seaboard are protesting over proposed new policies being introduced for collective agreement on commonages and the GLAS environmental scheme for farmers.
“ The problems which we are facing here in Donegal are identical to those experienced by the farmer who turned up at the Westport meeting.
A crowd of almost 2000 attended a meeting in Westport to protest about the proposed new policies being introduced for collective agreement on commonages and the GLAS environmental scheme for farmers.
“At the meeting it was outlined that the proposed collective agreement on commonages could not work for farmers. It would mean that one farmer would be responsible for the actions of his neighbour and could be penalised for the other farmers’ actions.
“It also emerged that farmers would be denied priority access to the GLAS environmental scheme if less than 50% of the commonage shareholders did not sign up to collective agreement.”