Following the agreement of a deal on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) last Friday (June 25), Ireland is being called on to “improve the deal at national level”.

Chris MacManus, a Sinn Féin TD who took part in last week’s trilogues as part of the European Parliament’s negotiating team, said that the government here “must use the flexibilities given to improve payment distribution among Irish Farmers”.

The agreement was accepted earlier today (Monday, June 28) by the council of agriculture ministers, with Minister Charlie McConalogue backing the compromises contained in it.

Although MacManus said that the compromise was “not the reform Sinn Féin had been seeking”, he nonetheless described it as “a step in the right direction but more change is required if we are to guarantee a viable future for family farms”.

“Throughout the process, the parliament battled a council committed to as little change as possible. The council went to great lengths to insert loopholes into any area that increased it’s ambition,” the Midlands North-West MEP asserted, claiming that Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue was “defending the status quo”.

“Across the EU, when 80% of payments go to 20% of farmers, the system can only be described as broken, and anyone supporting its continuation does a disservice to those struggling to hang on,” MacManus argued, adding that, in the EU, an average of 1,000 farmers leave the sector per day.

He said he would support the deal as it is “probably as close to what was politically possible, given the opposition from the council”.

MacManus identified five areas for the government to focus on in Ireland: moving towards 100% convergence; increasing front-loaded redistribution payments to 20% of the direct payments budget; implementing an 85% reduction on the proportion of any direct payment that exceeds €60,000; increasing the minimum spend on young farmers to 4% of direct payments; and designing straightforward and profitable eco-schemes.

“Generational renewal, land abandonment and the increasing role of feedlots are challenges that must be tackled in this programming period, if we are to stop further concentration,” he argued.

He added: “If we are to undergo a green transition, then surely it is our model which must be preserved. Unfortunately, this is not what is happening, with the current economics telling farmers to heavily intensify or risk being swallowed by the feedlot model.

“The family farming model must be protected at all costs and that requires radical change,” MacManus insisted.