The Tánaiste has acknowledged there are “challenges coming down the tracks in respect of some directives” for the dairy sector.
But he also told the Dáil this week that the “yield from dairy has been much stronger than previous years” and that it was an “innovative and robust sector”.
The Tánaiste was responding to the Independent TD for Cork South-West Michael Collins who had raised the issue of nitrate banding in the Dáil.
Deputy Collins said that dairy farmers were “struggling to make ends meet with the price of milk and dairy products starting to reduce while their costs are still increasing”.
He said:
“This is a fight they can take on, but the fight they cannot take on at present is the dropping of nitrates from 250 kg/ha to 220 kg/ha.
However Deputy Collins told the Tánaiste that the one fight that dairy farmers could not take on was “the dropping of nitrates from 250 kg per ha to 220 kg per ha”.
He told the Dáil:
“I attended a farm walk in Farnanes where I met a typical Irish farmer who has 71 cows. He is a married man with four young children. He has run his farm environmentally meticulously for many years.
“He has proper slurry spreading equipment and has done every other thing he had to do. If the nitrates drop from 250 kg per ha to 220 kg per ha, he will have to drop his number of cows from 71 to 55, 56 or 57 cows. If this is the case, he will face being wiped out”.
The Independent TD for Cork South-West warned that other dairy farmers would be in a similar position and asked the Tánaiste if the government intends to “plough ahead with the 250 to 220 nitrates drop?”
An interim review of the nitrates action programme will take place this year and will primarily be based on comparing water quality between 2021 and 2022.
Depending on the outcome of this review the nitrates limit under the derogation secured from the European Commission could fall to 220kg/N/ha down from 250kg/N/ha from January 2024.
In response to Deputy Collins the Tánaiste said “it is a directive that is coming down the tracks. Work is under way.”
He also told the deputy that “we have the exemption as it stands”.
Following the Dáil debate Deputy Collins said the Tánaiste’s response was “grossly offensive and profoundly out of touch”.
“The decision by the Tánaiste to characterise the nitrate issue as one of the challenges that dairy farmers are facing is infuriating because it demonstrates that there is no real insight at senior government level of the scale of the problem.
“Government just not does not seem to appreciate the nature and depth of the crisis that our dairy farmers are facing,” he added.