All eyes are on Leinster House today (Tuesday, October 10) as the Minister for Finance, Michael McGrath and Public Expenditure Minister, Paschal Donohoe, prepare to deliver Budget 2024.
Farmers across the country will be waiting to see if they will be winners or losers overall this year, but Budget 2024 will include a boost in payments for sheep farmers who will see payment per ewe increase to €20 while there will also be a €200/cow payment.
Hard-pressed tillage farmers are also in line for new financial supports in the region of an €8 million package.
Chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Jackie Cahill, is confident that his Fianna Fáil colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, will deliver for farmers in Budget 2024.
“I am confident that Minister McConalogue will ensure that his allocation is increased and that following the budget negotiations, the minister will deliver for famers,” Deputy Cahill said.
There has been a long list of demands placed in front of Minister McConalogue by the country’s largest farming organisations in the run up to budget day with a strong emphasis on securing support for farmers to deal with the higher cost of production that they face each day.
Against the backdrop of the nitrates derogation reduction many farm organisations and politicians have called on Minister McConalogue to ensure that there is a slurry storage capital investment package.
The rationale for backing a slurry storage capital investment programme in Budget 2024 has been previously outlined because of the improvements in water quality that it could help deliver.
Meanwhile, Minister McConalogue has been made aware of the continuing pressure on farmers to secure land and is believed to have persuaded cabinet colleagues to include Budget 2024 measures which will ensure that land is ringfenced for active farmers.
Farming organisations have also highlighted to the minister that new changes to EU animal welfare legislation indicate that there needs to be more support for farmers to keep calves on farms longer and have called for funding to be put in place for a calf-rearing scheme.
There has also been fresh pressure on the minister to secure new government funding for tuberculosis (TB) testing, which is likely to be included in Budget 2024, and to ensure that key agri-tax measures are fully funded particularly around consanguinity relief and in relation to taxes connected to succession planning.