‘Protest will raise awareness of income crisis for beef farmers’
This week’s letters from the Department of Agriculture demanding money back from thousands of farmers claiming disadvantaged area payments are expected to drive more farmers than ever onto the streets.
The protest next Tuesday will be organised by the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association at the ABP Ireland meat processing plant in Bandon.
It will take place from 8am to 2pm, and ICSA West Cork chairman Dermot Kelleher said it is not designed to interfere with business at the meat processing plant, but to raise awareness of the ongoing income crisis for beef farmers.
He said farmers are being penalised this year by processors insisting on specifications such as a 30-month age limit, weight limits on bulls, and restriction on the number of farms an animal can have been reared on.
He warned that Ireland’s reputation for grass-fed beef is under threat from processor requirements.
But it is this week’s letters clawing back payments that threaten to drive thousands of drystock farmers in disadvantaged areas to protest.
Mr Kelleher said yesterday that he had heard of farmers being asked to pay back up to €1,600 of their annual EU and Irish government-funded annual income support payment for farmers in the hills and other less favoured land areas.
He said the letters have come “out of the blue” and are causing great upset to farm families already set back this year by losses in their cattle farming operations.
He said farmers in disadvantaged areas now feel they are surplus to requirements, after losing out in the CAP reform which kicks in 2015, and encountering severe difficulties on their cattle businesses.
