Cattle farmers face export crisis
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.
There is no ground for complacency in this matter. Last year, the value of total live exports was 61 million. As recently as 2000, the value of the trade was 195 million. Our estimate has some 83,000 calves and weanlings being sold out of Cork alone.
If we project a loss in value of 100 per animal, we arrive at a figure of 8.3 million that will be lost to the farmers of Cork and, through them, the wider community.
Should the loss in value amount to 150 per animal the total amounts to a frightening 12.5 million. The knock-on effect for business reliant on farming communities will be very severe. ICMSA does not dispute the judgement handed down by the court as it is based on the law as it is.
But we cannot stand idly by while, through absolutely no fault of our own, huge swathes of the Irish farming community are to be deprived of access to a market for their livestock and have any chance of commercial viability removed from their family concerns.
As the situation applies now, individual shipping companies do not need a licence to transact business to and from Irish ports.
They are merely subject to the normal legislation governing health and safety issues. We see now the effect of this omission in the threat of one company to refuse to carry a vital element of agricultural exports.
Consequently, the ICMSA now calls on the Government to insist, as a fundamental and non-negotiable obligation for permission to operate, that any shipping company operating out of Irish ports be bound to take all cargo offered to it in good faith including livestock.
It is simply not acceptable to have as vital an export element as the nation's livestock sector at the mercy or whim of any individual or company.
The ICMSA expects the full support of any party concerned with not only the welfare but the very survival of the country's livestock trade and the farming families who depend on it.
Dermot Moynihan,
Macroom.
Gerald Quain,
Charleville,
Donal Harte,
Bandon,
Co Cork.
