With much speculation surrounding the nitrates derogation for 2024, Independent TD for Kerry, Michael Healy-Rae has said lowering the limit would be an “attack on Irish dairy farmers”.
While this reduction has not been confirmed, it was referred to in an Environment Protection Agency (EPA) report in June.
The report identified that derogation farms located within certain areas would likely need to reduce their application rate of manure from a maximum of 250kg nitrogen/ha per year to 220kg nitrogen/ha per year.
Deputy Healy-Rae said: “This move, along with ‘cow banding‘ is probably the most challenging attack on Irish dairy farmers who now face financial uncertainty into the years ahead, with many who have already jumped through every hoop put in front of them by elements in the current government struggling to keep ends meet.”
The introduction of banding will mean the cows are no longer automatically assigned a figure of 89kg of organic nitrogen (N).
Instead dairy cows will be given an organic N figure based on milk yield; this will be calculated on a rolling three-year average or based on 2022 yields.
Bands Milk yields Excretion rate Band 1 <4,500kg of milk 80kg organic N/cow Band 2 4,500-6,500kg of milk 92kg organic N/cow Band 3 >6,500kg of milk 106kg organic N/cow
Healy Rae said: “Rural Ireland has depended on the family dairy farm system that built Ireland’s multi-billion euro dairy system with so much of the run-off income spilling into the local economies throughout Ireland.
“Dairy farmers, many of them carrying on a tradition and a family way of life, simply cannot take another body blow.
“Farmers always faced challenges face on and implemented and changed, but the constant blow after blow from this government and especially parts of it who seem to be very ‘anti farming,’ are putting people at a crossroads.”