The government is being called on to make good on commitments made in last year's budget - Budget 2025 - when it announces Budget 2026 next Tuesday (October 7).

The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association (ICMSA) said that farmer attention will be focused on commitments given in last year's budget on an "income volatility measure" for the farming sector.

Denis Drennan, the ICMSA president, said that the upcoming budget also provides an opportunity for commitments in the programme for government to be made good on.

Drennan said the ICMSA was disappointed with the position of the Tax Strategy Group, which said in August that an income volatility measure would be "disproportionate".

He said: "We noted that the Tax Strategy Group seemed very concentrated on responding to proposals that certainly ICMSA never advanced, and the core problem, the destructive effects of excess income volatility, has been left unaddressed."

Drennan said that the ICSMA had met with the Department of Finance since then and had a "constructive meeting" on the possible options available to address income volatility, with an additional submission being made to the department after that.

"The Programme for Government has clearly identified income volatility in the agriculture sector as a key issue to be addressed," Drennan said.

"It bears repeating again and we'll go on saying it. We simply have to come up with some way of smoothing out the income farmers can earn," the ICMSA president said

"We must have a mechanism that will allow farmers to put away income in 'good' years and draw down in 'bad' in a way that's tax compliant and easy-to-manage," he added.

"It is a question of political will. The government could decide to dodge an increasingly critical question yet again, or it could do what it's elected to do, face up to the problem of ruinous income volatility and solve it," Drennan said.