Ireland ‘vulnerable’ without grants

WITHOUT farm subsidies, Ireland would have the fewest financially sound farms in the EU, research carried out by the Dutch Agricultural Economics Research Institute on behalf of Britain’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shows.

The research has highlighted Ireland’s vulnerability in the upcoming reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. The investigation of decoupled subsidies revealed only Finland has a bigger share of agricultural output accounted for by subsidies.

Whereas subsidies are less than 10% of output in countries like the Netherlands, Italy, and Belgium, they are over 30% in Austria and Slovenia, about 50% in Ireland, and more than 60% in Finland (Romania and Bulgaria were not included in the research).