Meat Industry Ireland (MII) has been called on by the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) to provide electronic payment facilities for farmers who are selling livestock.
The IFA’s livestock committee chairman Brendan Golden and sheep committee chairman Sean Dennehy met the meat industry representative group recently to discuss the provision of electronic payments.
In a statement on the matter, the IFA said:
Farmers who are selling livestock should have the option of Electronic Funds Transfer [EFT] if they want to avail of it. It is a standard service that exists across society and we want processors to extend it to farmers.
The exit of Ulster Bank and the branch closures announced by Bank of Ireland will lead to a further contraction of banking services in rural Ireland, the farming organisation warned, adding:
“Farmers simply won’t have the facility to lodge cheques because they won’t have a bank in their community.
“The absence of an EFT arrangement will put farmers who don’t have easy access to lodgement facilities at a disadvantage.”
As a result, Golden and Dennehy have asked processors to give this matter their urgent attention, noting:
For cashflow reasons, farmers shouldn’t have to wait for cheques to clear.
“We expect everybody who does business to upgrade their systems as soon as possible,” they said.