Representatives from the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar have held a “positive, constructive meeting” at the Fine Gael think-in today (Friday, September 15), IFA president Tim Cullinan has said.
The meeting covered the nitrates derogation, scheme payment delays, and a number of other issues.
Speaking to Agriland after the meeting, Cullinan said: “We had a very positive, constructive meeting with the Taoiseach here this morning.
“We are liaising with the Taoiseach’s office and when that process is over we will be relaying back to our people.
“Obviously we have some serious issues here, very serious, around the delay in farm payments and the whole nitrates derogation. We all know what has happened there over the last few weeks,” he said.
The IFA president added: “Everybody – from a government point of view and from an IFA point of view – we want to get this rectified on behalf of our members.”
Cullinan said that the IFA is set to update its members later on the outworkings of the meeting with the Taoiseach.
Earlier today, the Taoiseach said that he wanted to “build a new partnership” with farm organisations in the coming months to address a range of changes coming down the tracks for agriculture in Ireland.
“One thing I will be saying to the farm organisations is that I would like to build a new partnership with them in the months ahead,” he said.
“There are big changes happening, not just in Ireland but all around the world, because of climate, because of biodiversity loss, because of water quality, because of greater understanding of the impact food has on health, and also the need to produce more food.”
The Taoiseach added: “We need farmers to produce food, more of it, not less of it, but I don’t think the dialogue that we’ve had in recent times has been working. I think that needs to change.”
He said he wanted to have a similar relationship with farm organisations as currently exists between government and trade unions and industry bodies.
“I’d like there to be a new partnership, the likes of which we have with the trade unions and the business groups, where we sit down and we try to manage change in the interests of farmers, rather than trying to make out that these changes aren’t going to happen or they can be stopped. We all know they can’t,” the Taoiseach said.