Milk farmers warn Ireland’s CAP payments must be protected

THE incoming Government will have to hit the ground running to ensure Ireland’s existing allocation under CAP is not diminished by a single euro, Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association president Jackie Cahill cautioned.

“There won’t be a day to be lost on this,” he said. “The Government will have to move speedily and decisively. In the matter of CAP reform, Ireland’s concentration should not be on ceilings but on directing payments, in the first instance, towards active farmers and the preservation of existing national ‘envelopes’ of CAP funds.”

Mr Cahill was speaking in response to comments by Friedrich Wacker, director of International Affairs and Gobal Food Policy, for the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in Germany at an Agra Europe conference in London.