Ireland to bear brunt of reforms, says Walsh

IRISH farmers and the Irish economy are being asked to bear too much of the CAP reform shake-up, said Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh at a seminar on the Fischler proposals in Dunmanway, Co Cork last Tuesday.

If direct payments are decoupled as proposed, and the link with production broken, economic logic requires that a farmer will scale back or even cease production, he said.

Beef and sheep production is expected to fall more steeply in Ireland than in the EU as a whole. This would damage employment and economic activity up-stream and down-stream of agriculture. Rural towns and villages would suffer.