Helen O’Sullivan, who declared she will run as an independent candidate in the upcoming local elections, has urged the government to “release monies owed to farmers”.
O’Sullivan recently resigned from the Farmers’ Alliance of which she was a co-founder. She now declared that she will run in the local elections in June in Bantry, west Cork.
With another week of rain forecast for this week, O’Sullivan said the ground is saturated, fodder is running out, and slatted tanks are full, and “there seems to be no end in sight”.
She is now calling on Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue to contact the relevant department to release monies owed to farmers immediately.
O’Sullivan said she has been contacted by numerous farmers who are still waiting for payments. “It’s now they need the money to get themselves out of this dire straits,” she added.
Payments
Farmers are under “enormous” mental and financial pressure as they are still waiting for payments under the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) and other schemes, she said.
Earlier this year, Minister McConalogue announced interim payments for Tranche 1 participants under ACRES who had not received their advance payments by February.
The rate of this interim payment was €4,000 for those in general and €5,000 for those in the Co-operation Project. ACRES payments will issue in June for Tranche 1 participants.
“Bills are mounting just like the slurry in the slatted tanks. How much more can the farmers take? Tillage farmers are equally under pressure as they cannot set crops.
“It’s gone too late for some crops now at this stage. This will add to the enormous cost of straw at the fall of the year due to the scarcity that will be created because of ground conditions,” she said.
O’Sullivan added that sheep farmers are “suffering the same fate” trying to lamb ewes in the current wet weather, and that also vegetable growers “are in the same boat”.
The independent local candidate said the cost of fodder has “gone through the roof”, and asked farmers to help out their fellow farmers and to not charge “outrageous prices for bales”.