The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) has condemned Ireland's proposals for the next CAP, claiming the plans will accelerate the policy's "slide into irrelevance".

At the weekend, the government, in its role as the current head of the Council of the EU (holding the rotating six-month presidency for the second half of 2026), published a set of proposals that will steer the council in its negotiations with the European Parliament and the European Commission on the EU's next long-term budget.

The budget, which will cover the period 2028-2034, also outlines how much money will be devoted to CAP in that period.

However, the Irish proposals do not improve on last year's initial proposals from the European Commission, which envisaged a cut of over 20% to the next CAP compared to the current CAP cycle.

This would leave the next CAP with a budget of only a little over €290 billion in current 2026 prices, despite the commission's plans from last year being criticised by, among many others, Ireland's own Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon.

This figure of allocation to CAP is also in stark contrast with the European Parliament (the other EU body, apart from the council, that has the power to amend commission proposals), which has called for the next CAP to be allocated €433 billion.

ICMSA

Commenting on Ireland's budget proposals, ICMSA president Denis Drennan slammed the plans as "defeatist".

"Certainly ICMSA and the broader Irish agri-sector would have at least expected the Irish government to fight and win back some ground for CAP," Drennan said.

"But it appears to have effectively surrendered lock, stock and barrel on the question of the level of funding absolutely necessary to ensure that the EU retains the ability to feed itself and be assured of food security," he added.

The ICMSA president said: "We’ll be told that CAP had to be hollowed out and that money diverted to defence, but this is the flawed logic.

According to Drennan, there is "no point" in Irish ministers "claiming a spurious victory for not proposing further cuts".

He claimed the government has "used our farming and the wider agri-food sector as a pawn to be sacrificed in a quest for some other vague and unlikely ambition".

"Ireland keeps on giving up and giving ground in the one area within the EU where we have an acknowledged capacity and expertise," he said.

"We keep on giving up and giving away our farming sector in the hope that we’ll get something back in some other area like corporation tax on non-EU corporations.

"The irony is that the other member states, to whom we have yet again caved in, will surely draw the completely opposite conclusion; they will conclude, rightly, that the Irish government can always be relied upon to crumble under the pressure," Drennan claimed.