Farmers to protest at council meetings over red tape hell
FARMERS are set to target local council meetings with tractor protests to vent ‘frustration and anger with the political system’ over the next month.
The move is an escalation of protests by the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) in the last number of weeks. Earlier this month, they protested in solidarity with farmers across the continent.
On Tuesday night, IFA president Francie Gorman announced the next phase of the ‘Enough Is Enough’ campaign, following a meeting of his organisation’s National Council. He said: ‘Farmers are sick of regulations imposed on them at European, national and county council level. These are adding extra costs at a time when the cost of doing business has rocketed.
‘There has been no additional support for farmers with our CAP [Common Agricultural Policy] payments being repurposed towards environmental measures rather than food production.
‘This is unsustainable, and the clear message from farmers is, “Enough is enough”.’
He said the IFA National Council was clear that it wanted the campaign to continue. ‘As well as the actions at council meetings, IFA county executives are free to have their own actions at local level as part of the Enough Is Enough campaign, and a number of counties are planning other actions,’ Mr Gorman added.
The first such demonstration took place in Co. Longford yesterday evening.
Last week, Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue confirmed that he would make interim payments to those farmers on the ACRES scheme – Ireland’s new agrienvironment climate strategy under the country’s CAP Strategic Plan.
Mr Gorman acknowledged: ‘The announcement last week on ACRES payments following our meeting with the minister goes some way towards addressing the payments debacle and the general anger amongst farmers regarding over-regulation and over-complicated schemes.’
Cork-based TD Michael Collins, leader of the newly created Independent Ireland group, said he entirely understood the concerns raised by farmers.
He said: ‘Absolutely I see where they are coming from. They are pulling their hair out. If they could even plan for one year ahead that would be one thing, but they can’t even plan for two weeks ahead.
‘Enough is enough, they’re completely correct there.’
It comes as the IFA yesterday told the Oireachtas Agriculture Committee that the complete removal of the nitrates derogation would ‘jeopardise the viability of thousands of farmers’. This follows an EU cut in the upper nitrates limit in certain areas of the country last month.
The IFA warned of a ‘huge knock-on social impact on rural Ireland’.
It said: ‘Removing the derogation will not automatically result in improvements in water quality but the economic damage it will do is guaranteed. That is why we cannot countenance its removal.’
‘They are pulling their hair out’