Urgent changes are needed to the proposed Aids to Private Storage (APS) scheme from the European Commission for dairy produce, according to the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society (ICOS).

The society has made a submission to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine outlining its concerns on a number of areas, including “inadequate” fixed storage aid rates for butter and skim milk powder (SMP).

“The commission needs to wake up to the potentially very serious impending damage that could be wrought on the entire EU dairy sector, and to not be caught in a position in months to come where it has done too little, too late,” an ICOS statement said.

The proposals, officially confirmed yesterday, Wednesday, April 22, by the commission, are now set to go before member states, with ICOS taking the opportunity to try and sway the Government’s appraisal of the plan.

The fixed storage aid rates for butter and SMP, which ICOS drew particular attention to, have been halved compared to 2014 levels, despite the “substantial increase” in the cost of storage since then, the society noted.

ICOS president Jerry Long raised these issues yesterday with European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Janusz Wojciechowski during an online meeting.

ICOS is calling for these support levels for SMP and butter to be increased to “ensure the scheme provides some level of meaningful support, and for the support to be targeted where it is most needed”.

In addition, ICOS has criticised the “unfair” allocation of just 2.1% of the cheese storage quota to Ireland. Ireland produces 5% of EU’s cheese.

“The allocation of the cheese quota by the European Commission on the basis of total cheese production unfairly penalises Ireland. Up to 50% of EU cheese production is fresh cheese, which is not suitable for storage,” the ICOS statement argued.

“Including these cheese volumes in the calculation of national allocations provides certain EU countries with a disproportionally large allocation – in comparison with their production of eligible cheese types – and leaves countries like Ireland, where our production of cheddar is very suited to storage, with a disproportionately low allocation,” ICOS pointed out.

Time-frame

The statement from the society continued: “Finally, it is a major disappointment to us that the draft regulations propose a very short time-frame with an end date of June 30.

It is still very uncertain whether there will be any market improvements by this time, as we do not know when the food service industry, i.e. restaurants and catering services, will be back up and running.

“In addition, at that point Ireland will be just coming off our peak production and will still be producing, and therefore will likely need to store significant volumes of product,” the statement added.

It concluded: “ICOS is therefore asking for an extension of the scheme until the end of September, so as much as possible of the current production season can be covered.”