Making sure that Irish farmers do not lose out in the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will be in the hands of the Irish government, which will have the power to form the schemes Irish farmers can participate in, according to Irish MEP Chris MacManus.
In a detailed interview with AgriLand, the Sinn Féin MEP for the Midlands-North West constituency voiced his views on European affairs affecting Irish farmers, and gave an insight into European politics.
With the next CAP likely to be working on a reduced budget, MacManus was asked what his views are on this, and what can be done so that Irish farmers aren’t losing out or being asked to do more for less.
In his reply, the MEP said: “EU farmers are facing a budget cut of nearly 10% in direct payments and nearly 12% in indirect payment. We need to call a spade a spade. There’s no getting away from the fact that farmers were let down with these cuts to CAP; we shouldn’t forget that.
“That cut is harder to accept when you see other areas like the militarisation of the European Union, which has seen its budget increase in recent years.
“Here in Ireland we’re net contributors to the EU budget so we do need to be very conscious about where our contributions are going and fighting to make sure that the priorities we want to see are given sufficient budget.
“In recent times farmers are right to feel aggrieved; while the budget is being cut, the hoops they have to jump through are forever increasing.
“We have to get that balance right, between letting farmers get on with the job of food production and being custodians of our landscape.
In terms of how do we make sure that farmers don’t lose out, that’s largely going to be in the hands of the government here in Ireland because, through the development of the strategic plan regarding CAP, they’ll be designing that at national level, and then the EU will approve it.
Continuing, MacManus stressed that the farming community will need to make their voices heard in this process because there will be a level of public consultation but added:
“The onus is on the government to design schemes that are attractive to farmers so they continue to receive the payment they previously got without seriously increasing the burden on themselves through additional conditionality.
“Because if they get this wrong, up to 20 to 30% – though that’s still up for negotiation – of Pillar I would effectively be wasted as it would be tied up in schemes that wouldn’t be profitable or workable and thus become unattractive.
That’s the challenge – but the potential is there because many farmers will remember fondly the old REPS schemes.
Concluding, MacManus said that Irish farmers can be protected from the worst of these cuts by the creation of simple, straightforward and lucrative schemes and thankfully these schemes can be determined in Dublin and not in Brussels.
Convergence of CAP payments
Asked about his view of the convergence or “levelling” of CAP payments to farmers, MacManus said:
“Sinn Fein has always been very clear on convergence; we support 100% convergence. However, convergence on its own could leave small and medium farmers in a worse situation than they are currently.
“To explain that, we’re aware of farmers who have entitlements that are above the national average, they would have built them up during the good times, but their overall payment is relatively small. They’d lose through full convergence.
“My predecessor Matt Carthy a could of years ago did a county-by-county analysis and identified that, while over half of the farmers would be better off through convergence – and therefore from our point of view it must be supported, it doesn’t mean that the majority of farmers in all counties would see an increase.
“That’s why convergence must be delivered hand-in-hand with redistributive payment.”
Under this, the MEP explained, for the first 30ac you declare, you’d get an extra sum on top of the average, “so what small and medium farmers could lose through convergence, they may make back hopefully some more through being the mean gainers through the redistributive payment”.
However, that only will work if that payment is well funded, and unfortunately the current proposal – and it’s being negotiated now between the parliament, the commission and the council – it’ll probably be another four or five months before a final consensus document comes back to us in parliament.
“But it’s set at 6% – that’s way, way too low. We would have been calling for in the region of 20% plus on Pillar I to be redistributive payment.
“As a final point on this, there’s evidence to show that farmers who are receiving a higher per-hectare payment are not significantly more productive than those on lower payments.
“That defeats the argument that payments still bear a relation to being a reward for high productivity. Some people still have that perception even though decoupling happened more than a dozen years ago.”