One of the country’s leading calf buyers has been scathing in his criticism of the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue over what he claims is his “failure to act” on the collapsing Irish calf market.
In an interview with Agriland, Wicklow Calf Company’s Seamus Scallan said: “It is a disgrace how little the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue seems to care about the Irish calf market which has seen prices totally collapse over the past week.”
He said the minister should be liaising further with Irish calf exporters and French authorities to address what is “evolving to be a chaotic situation for dairy farmers in Ireland who are trying to sell their calves”.
Scallan said that the suspension of Pignet lairage last Friday (March 24) was handled poorly and added that “the people responsible for any mistreatment of calves or breaking of lairage rules should be suspended, but it is not fair to suspend the entire business”.
“We had our lairages at home full of calves ready to go to markets on mainland Europe when we were informed via e-mail late on Friday evening that we could not go as the lairage in France had been immediately suspended,” Scallan explained.
“We have a huge market for Irish calves on the continent and there is great demand for them, but we can’t get the calves out there. It’s a scandal.”
Scallan believes the minister should have used his position to liaise with French authorities for the lairage to remain open until exporters cleared the loads which were booked in.
He said previous ministers for agriculture “were a lot more pro-active and had a far better working relationship with both the French authorities and Irish-based calf exporters”.
“It’s bad enough that we can’t move calves when weather conditions don’t allow us to sail, but not being able to sell calves due to a lack of communication and poor management of the situation in this country is a total joke.”
Scallan said the dairy farmers who he buys calves from are becoming increasingly frustrated with the situation and are demanding solutions to solve the impasse which currently exists.
Wicklow Calf Company sources and supplies approximately 50,000 calves/year for customers across both Ireland and mainland Europe.
Scallan, who has been in business since 1967, said he has never seen the situation so bad and called on Minister McConalogue to act on the evolving crisis urgently.