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.

Mr Wacker said Germany supports direct payments to farmers without being tied to production in the ongoing discussions about the reform of the Common Agriculture Policy, the modified version of which is expected to be produced during Ireland’s presidency in 2013.

German officials attending the London event said that they “strongly reject” ceilings on direct payments and believe all payments should be decoupled from production by 2013.

Jackie Cahill, said Ireland was the first state in the EU to completely decouple payments from production, so Herr Wacker’s comments do not apply to Irish farmers.

Further decoupling was also proposed in a draft report of the CAP proposed to the European Parliament this week by German MEP Albert Dess.

This report is the first formal response to the European Commission’s call for communications on CAP reforms post-2013. The Commission has proposed that eco-friendly “greening” measures should be a mandatory component of direct payments but Mr Dess favours delivering environmental improvements through the second pillar of the CAP.

* Organic scheme: Meanwhile, farmers can once again apply for support under the Organic Farming Scheme.

Copies together with application forms, are available at agriculture.gov.ie/organics