The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) has said that it “naturally assumes” that farmers will be included in any possible one-off payment for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Budget 2024.
The budget will be announced tomorrow (Tuesday, October 10) and the president of the ICMSA, Pat McCormack, has said that he expects farmers to be included in any such arrangement for SMEs.
“[Our] farmer members [are] the original small- and medium-sized business sector in most areas of the state, and their exclusion from any such provision would make the exercise meaningless,” McCormack said.
“The ICMSA…welcomes the suggestion that help would be extended to a very hard-pressed sector. We will, naturally, assume that farms, [which] are the very definition of small- and medium-seized businesses, will be included in any such scheme.”
According to McCormack, Budget 2024 is an opportunity for government to take action on political commitments to support food producers.
“We have heard all the usual protestations from our politicians about their commitment to supporting our farming sector, protestations that fly in the record of what [it has] actually done,” he said.
McCormack added: “Here’s a chance for the government to actually show that [it] grasps the fact that the small- to medium-seized businesses in Ireland outside the cities and bigger towns really means our farms.
“Let’s just see if [the government] understands that and doesn’t tie [itself] up in knots looking for a definition of small- to medium- sized businesses that excludes the most obvious component in that economic sector,” the ICMSA president added.
ICMSA welcomes SCEP extension
Also today (Monday, October 9), the ICMSA welcomed the decision from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to extend the period in which farmers have to become certified as quality assured in order to get paid under the Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP).
Under SCEP, participants must be certified under Bord Bia’s Sustainable Beef and Lamb Assurance Scheme (SBLAS).
Prior to last Thursday (October 5), farmers wishing to participate in SCEP had until October 16 to submit an SBLAS application and become certified.
However, on Thursday, the department confirmed that this deadline would now only apply to submission of an SBLAS application, with farmers now having until January 22, 2024, to become certified.
The ICMSA said that it had proposed to the department that the previous arrangement should be altered, having told the department that there would be timing difficulties involving those who had applied for SCEP in getting approval under SBLAS.
Des Morrison, the ICMSA’s livestock chairperson, welcomed this change to the SCEP terms and conditions, saying: “Where people work together with good intentions and in good faith, solutions to administrative tangles could be advanced.”