Inability to pay plea ‘not an option for Glanbia’

GLANBIA must decide whether shareholders and investors are going to receive priority over dairy farmers, said IFA President Padraig Walshe at this week’s suppliers’ meeting in Kilkenny.

He said the Glanbia board and management cannot plead inability to pay as a justification for recent milk price cuts, with profits of €70m pencilled in for 2006.

Mr Walshe called for a Glanbia commitment on milk prices for 2006 of 0.5 cent per litre above the average of the national KPMG milk price survey.

At an ICMSA emergency meeting last week, national president Jackie Cahill said the Glanbia milk price cut was outrageously unfair and unjust.

He revealed that an ICMSA delegation had met Glanbia officials on the day the milk price cut was announced.

“We were not even extended the courtesy of being told that Glanbia intended announcing a cut that very afternoon,” Mr Cahill said.

He said ICMSA are willing to “work towards a solution.

But they are “sick and tired of dealing with very well paid co-op management who, rather than having a look at their own overhead costs and reviewing their abysmal marketing performance, always take the easy option of cutting the milk price”.