Elderly dairy farmers get raw deal on quotas

THANK you for highlighting the abuse of the elderly (January 28) and for Eamon Timmins’s feature article (January 29).

I am 72 years old. For the past seven to eight years there has been a sustained attack on elderly and incapacitated dairy farmers to push us out of dairying and to acquire our milk quotas at a totally undervalued price.

There have been many changes in the quota regime over the years, all of which were designed to take money out of the pockets of those who can no longer continue milking, mostly the elderly and incapacitated.

The present archaic system means that if a person wants to sell his/her quota, a price must be named, but if it is considered too high by the exchange system the sale falls through even though 30% of the quota is confiscated at 50 cent per gallon whether the seller wants to sell at that price or not.

Surely this is abuse.

Daithi Burke

Gooseberry Hill

Meelin

Newmarket

Co Cork