Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Leo Varadkar has told the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) that there has been “no discussion at government level” about restricting agricultural output, the association has said.
IFA president Tim Cullinan met the Tánaiste yesterday evening (Wednesday, February 3) to discuss several issues, including climate targets for farming, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Brexit, rising input costs and work permits.
The meeting was also attended by Minister of State for new market development, farm safety and research and development Martin Heydon.
“Everyone understands the need to work towards achieving our sector emissions ceiling of between 16MT to 18MT of carbon, which is a reduction of between 22% and 30%.
“However, this must be achieved by continued research work to reduce methane output per animal and not by using a blunt instrument to limit output. IFA is totally opposed to any imposed limits on production,” Cullinan stressed, speaking today.
According to the IFA president, Minister Varadkar told the IFA at the meeting that “there has been no discussion at government level about restricting output at farm level in any sector”, a point Cullinan said the Fine Gael leader was “clear” about.
“As set out in Food Vision 2030, we must strike the right balance between the three pillars of sustainability – environmental, economic and social,” Cullinan highlighted.
“The emphasis must be on reducing methane output per animal. We need to allow time for what are very promising scientific solutions to take effect. We cannot use a blunt instrument to address our environmental challenges, which would have significant economic and social consequences.”
“Costs have surged on farms this year and farmers cannot afford to have further restrictions placed on them,” he added.
The issue of CAP also came up at the meeting, in which the IFA delegation “made it clear that a cohort of our most productive farmers are going to have their incomes decimated”.
“The government must come up with additional funding to support the beef, sheep and tillage sectors,” Cullinan argued.
On Brexit, we reminded the Tánaiste that there are still serious threats to Irish farming and that some sectors are already suffering the consequences. The Brexit Adjustment Reserve must be available for our sector.”
The IFA president concluded: “There are also labour shortages in farms and in the processing sector. While there has been an allocation of work permits for the sector, there are significant backlogs in the processing of permits, which is causing great frustration.”