Unfettered access to details is a bad idea
Policymakers and ordinary citizens alike have had to examine their own attitudes and ask hard questions about complacency and a — tolerated — lack of supervision and oversight.
We’ve had to accept the fact that in very many vital areas of our economic and commercial life that we didn’t know the facts — and, moreover, that we weren’t too bothered by that deficiency. In the post-bailout economic wreckage, many of us swore that such wilful ignorance had to cease and that — from here on in — we were going to go past the lazy clichés and actually work out how a system was constructed and, more importantly, why it was constructed in a particular way.
One specific cliché that sets my teeth on edge every time I encounter it — and as president of ICMSA, I encounter it a quite a bit — is the glib and silly accusation that the farmers of Ireland, and Europe, are effectively receiving an EU ‘dole’, the so-called ‘cheque in the post’, through the system of direct payments.
We were, I was often solemnly informed, doing nothing except waiting for the postman’s van and the rustle of the envelope on the floor.
Whenever someone resorts to this silly cliché I will attempt to gently point out certain facts. Facts became unfashionable in Ireland for a long time. But they’re making a belated and very welcome reappearance, and while everyone is entitled to their own opinion — no-one is entitled to their own facts. The facts are the facts and they stand alone, objective and impartial.
The ‘cheque in the post’ usually refers to the Basic Payment (formerly known as the Single Farm Payment) which, contrary to pub myth, is most assuredly not any form of EU dole.
The Basic Payment is nothing more than a payment to the farmer by the EU to ensure that EU consumers have access to food that is both affordable and produced to the highest standards of health and safety anywhere on the planet.
The Treaty of Rome, which is the foundation stone of the whole EU edifice that has followed, is absolutely categorical: the agricultural policy of the community is aimed at producing affordable and safe food for the largely urban consumers of the (as it was then) Community. That was the starting and finishing point for the policy then. And it still is.
The welfare of the producers of that affordable and safe food — the farmers — came a very distant second in the list of considerations that motivated that policy. And they still do. The Basic Payment is the absolute bare minimum payment to the farmers consistent with the policy of producing affordable, secure and sustainable food for the consumers of the huge urban centres of Germany, France, northern Italy, the UK, and the Benelux countries.
The Basic Payment is less of a farmer subsidy than it is consumer subsidy; I have always held the opinion that farmers would much prefer to be able to earn a decent return through market prices rather than by direct payments but the Commission seems unwilling to confront the cartel of dominant multiples and supervising retail margins that would allow that.
The Basic Payment is the payment that I receive in return for having every facet of my business open up to inspection at any time and with the minimum of notice within the cross-compliance system.
It’s the payment I receive for supplying food to market at an artificially low price relative to the effort, cost and skills that went into producing it. Those are the simple facts of the matter and they’re easily verified by anyone who wants to find out what they’re talking about.
The average basic payment is approximately €9,000 and the media’s perhaps understandable fascination with the kind of six and seven-digit payments we see to certain individuals and corporations is wholly unrepresentative of the reality for the vast majority of farm families.
Certainly ICMSA takes a jaundiced view of some of the cheques going to some of the recipients: we think that direct payments should be directed at active farmers and not land-holding corporations or ‘hobby’ farmers. We do not consider the present system as ideal and we are on the record as favouring certain reforms.
In regards to the identification of individual recipients; we are not — and never have been- against transparency. We have merely pointed out it is an undeniable fact that there are some elements who would be very keen to find out how much some elderly farmers living in a conveniently remote area receives — and when it will be received.
We think that the list of direct payment recipients should be kept by the Department of Agriculture or Teagasc with all queries vetted by them. What’s wrong with that?
What’s wrong with asking someone why they want to know what some elderly farmer living alone received in his Basic Payment?
