The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine will hold a full day’s worth of meetings this week to discuss three of the most pressing issues in the agriculture sector at the moment.
In three different sessions, the TDs and senators on the committee will discuss forestry, the pig sector and the issue of dairy farmers in fixed milk-price contracts.
The meetings will get under way at 9:00a.m on Wednesday (April 13) and are expected to conclude at 5:30p.m that evening when break times and adjournments are included.
For the forestry session, it is expected that Minister of State with responsibility for land use and biodiversity Pippa Hackett will be in attendance, along with forestry stakeholder groups.
Minister Hackett has recently expressed optimism over the forestry licencing process in Ireland.
“I am pleased to say that we are meeting the overall target in the plan, and that output across all licence categories is well above 2021 levels which will be reflected in the Q1 [first quarter] update to be published next week,” the minister said last week.
The session for the pig sector will include representatives from the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), Meat Industry Ireland (MII) and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
The IFA and MII – along with the Irish Grain and Feed Association (IGFA) – have submitted to the department a plan for a €100 million support package for the sector.
That followed a protest by pig farmer members of the IFA outside the department’s offices in Kildare Street in Dublin late last month.
For the session on fixed milk-price contracts, it is expected that representatives from the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society (ICOS) will be in attendance.
It is also understood that the committee has sought Ornua to appear also.
This session is in response to the issue of farmers who entered fixed milk-price contracts when monthly milk prices were lower than they are now while input prices have seen very considerable increases.
The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and Marine has 14 members, comprising nine TDs and five senators. It is chaired by Fianna Fáil Tipperary TD Jackie Cahill.