The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) is the only farm organisation that has not attended a meeting of the Farmers’ Charter today (Wednesday, April 5), Agriland understands.
The IFA said yesterday that it will not attend today’s meeting of charter stakeholders in protest over a move to push back dates of payments for a number of schemes.
Sources have indicated that the IFA are the only farm organisation that have decided not to attend the meeting today.
The main topic of today’s meeting is the Area Monitoring System (AMS) and the use of satellites to inspect farmland to check eligibility for scheme payments.
A spokesperson for the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) told Agriland that senior figures in the organisation did have a meeting yesterday evening to discuss the possibility of not attending the meeting.
However, due to the importance of the topic under discussion today, the ICSA decided that it “had to be there today”.
It is understood that today’s charter meeting will cover questions over what the satellite monitoring system can and cannot do.
The ICSA’s position on AMS and satellite monitoring is that the system should only be used for checking eligibility for scheme payments and nothing else. The association is concerned over what the system could mean for farmers’ data protection.
IFA position on charter meetings
Last month, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine wrote to farmers to confirm new payment dates, after originally informing farm organisations of its plan to do so at a Farmers’ Charter meeting earlier in the month.
IFA president Tim Cullinan said yesterday: “The IFA will not be attending any further negotiations until we meet with [Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue] to discuss the proposed delay in farm payment dates and the overall charter negotiating process.
“Following the last meeting of the group, the department proceeded to announce payment dates for 2023 which in some cases are a month later than 2022, and which we completely reject.
“This is totally unacceptable,” he added.
The department has informed farmers that payments under the Areas of Natural Constraints (ANC) Scheme will be pushed back by a month to October 17, while the payment for the Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) – which replaces the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) – will be made from October 24.
The IFA has accused the department of “acting unilaterally” in making these changes.