FG rap Government on falling farm incomes

The Government has been accused of failing to take urgent action to tackle the issue of declining farm family incomes.

Fine Gael spokesman Billy Timmins, TD, said the Central Statistic Office (CSO) provisional figures highlighted a marginal increase of only 2.2% in farm incomes in 2003.

“This 'increase' is meaningless, particularly, when one considers the fact that inflation for 2003 will be almost 4% and the fact that farmers in 2002 experienced a decrease in their incomes of 9%.