Tánaiste Micheál Martin indicated today (Thursday, September 19) at the National Ploughing Championships in Rathenisk that Budget 2025 will be “farmer friendly”.
He also said that the most important message he had for farmers on the final day of the Ploughing Championships from government and Fianna Fáil was that food security “is extremely important in the modern era”.
The Tánaiste praised the Irish farm system and said it is “extremely good at producing food of very high quality”.
“Food security in my view means that we have to look after our food production system which means we have to look after farmers – family farms in particular, through our taxation system, through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and through what are other third strands of revenue we can create within state aid rules particularly for certain objectives that farmers have been asked to fulfill and so it’s one of very strong support for farming and agriculture into the future and to create a horizon for farmers that’s medium to long term.
“The issue at the moment really there’s so much short termism in terms of directives or in terms of the CAP multi-financial annual framework in the European Union,” Micheál Martin said.
Tánaiste
The Tánaiste was back in Rathenisk today for a second time this week, during which time he met with various farming organisations and listened to their “concerns”.
According to Micheál Martin Budget 2025 will be “farmer friendly”.
He said that in the budget on Tuesday, October 1, Fianna Fáil was committed with its “colleagues in government to doing everything we possibly can to support farm families, to support the agricultural sector and to support investment in rural Ireland”.
The Tánaiste said that there had already been “discussions” between himself and the Minister for Finance, Jack Chambers, who he said is “very aware of the needs of the farming industry” on this issue.
Earlier today the Taoiseach, Simon Harris, also told Agriland that farmers are “struggling financially” and said that the government was going to “put financial supports in place for the various sectors across agriculture”.
He said that the government was also going to make sure that farmers “will benefit from some of the other measures that we intend to bring in”.
“This budget will see reductions in taxation and this budget will see a continuation of reliefs and this budget will also look at other ways we can practically help people with with the cost of living.
“One area I feel very strongly about, a lot of farming families have raised this with me – is the cost of sending a child to college so I want to see if we can reduce the cost of education, the cost of going to college, college fees as well.
“More broadly though, because this is my first budget as Taoiseach, I do want this to be the start of a conversation we have, about how we sustain the family farm into the future,” Simon Harris said.