Cattle farmers face export crisis

FOLLOWING the Supreme Court’s decision of March 9 to lift the injunction compelling the country’s biggest ferry company to carry live exports, a most critical threat is now posed to the Irish livestock industry.

As a result, we could be sea-locked and the country's livestock exporters would no longer have any means of getting their animals to market.

That a development of this nature would adversely affect the prices of calves and weanlings is simply a matter of fact. The ICMSA is not prepared to accept a situation whereby the livelihoods of thousands of farmers are threatened with savage income cuts.