The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) has claimed that farmers have been “led up the garden path” on a potential dairy reduction scheme.
The association’s comments come after Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue said that a reduction scheme for dairy cows is “off the table”.
A dairy cow reduction scheme – which has been referred to as a “cull scheme” by some stakeholders – was one of the recommendations in the final report of the Food Vision Dairy Group.
Due to a perceived lack of stakeholder support, the idea of such a scheme has never been progressed beyond the consultation stage, with Minister McConalogue saying previously that there were no plans in place to do so. Funding for such a scheme did not form part of Budget 2024.
Now, the minister appears to have gone a step further by seemingly scrapping the recommendation altogether. In a statement to Agriland, the minister said: “I can give clarity around certain policy directions, including taking the dairy cow reduction scheme off the table.”
Responding to this, ICMSA president Denis Drennan claimed that the minister’s actions were “cynical”.
“The minister’s own officials proposed this scheme in February 2022, they put figures on it… The officials pushed strongly for the inclusion of this scheme in the final report,” Drennan said.
“This created an expectation, and farmers began making preparations on the basis that the scheme was on the way. Today, after waiting for two years, they realise that they have been ‘led up the garden path’ and the minister has no intention now – if ever he had – of introducing an exit scheme.
“He’s just going to regulate them out of existence with no exit package. It is unbelievably cynical and gives a glimpse of what the Irish government really thinks of its dairy and livestock farmers,” Drennan claimed.
According to the ICMSA president, a delegation from the organisation had met with officials from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine “a number of weeks ago” at which the ICMSA representatives were told that, at that point, the scheme was still under consideration.
Drennan went on to accuse the government of “saying one thing to their own citizens while obviously planning to do something different all the while”.
“It’s a really poor day for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and an even poorer day for those of us who assumed that we could accept in good faith what we were being told was going to happen.”
Drennan said that he will raise the issue in a meeting with the new Taoiseach, Simon Harris, which is due to take place in the coming weeks.
“ICMSA will be meeting with Taoiseach Simon Harris shortly and we will be asking him blunt questions about this episode and others. We cannot continue with this uncertainty, created by our own government, for any longer,” he commented.