Farm leader urges pay freeze for food sector

THE Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association leader called yesterday for a wage freeze in the food processing sector so that farmer incomes can recover.

Pat O’Rourke, president, warned at the Association’s annual general meeting in Limerick that farmers could not be part of a new national agreement unless the decline in farm incomes was positively addressed in the negotiations.

He said the last national agreement, the PPF, failed totally to deliver what was agreed on farm incomes. When the PPF was negotiated in 1999, farmers had suffered a fall of 20% in their income over the previous three years.