The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) presidential and deputy presidential debate in Kerry which was set to take place on Monday night (October 9), has been cancelled.
Members of the association were informed of this decision in an email sent by IFA deputy president and national returning officer, Brian Rushe.
He stated that the decision not to proceed with the scheduled debate was in light of an email “purporting to be from Kerry IFA” sent on Friday morning.
This email “was not issued by Kerry IFA” and “contains a number of inaccurate and potentially defamatory statements”, and has been “forwarded to Gardaí”, Rushe said.
IFA
Meanwhile, a funding support package worth €2.383 million to the horticulture sector has been welcomed by the IFA fruit and vegetable chair, Niall McCormack.
However, he said that some growers will not qualify for support and that a scheme with unknown payment rates does “little” to alleviate the financial pressure that all growers are under today.
“The fact that the important white mushroom production sector and the vast majority of Irish-grown strawberries appear to be excluded from this support scheme needs to be rectified.
“These growers all experienced the same hugely inflated input costs as other sub-sectors of Irish horticulture. The mushroom sector has seen a mass exodus of growers in recent years,” McCormack said.
Not adding national funding to the allocation from the EU Agricultural Reserve was a “missed opportunity” which Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue must “fix” in the upcoming Budget, he added.
McCormack said the funding could have been a lot more “meaningful”, as the European Commission allowed member states to complement the funding with 200% funding from the National Exchequer.
“The increased costs of growing all horticulture crops, compounded by the price pressure from food buyers, means that there is no room to account for events such as weather or input cost spike.
“Growers are currently harvesting outdoor crops in extremely challenging conditions with losses inevitable. Further support that is inclusive of all growers is required to ensure our sector does not decline further,” he said.