Beef baron, sheikh and priests the big winners of CAP cash
SOME of the largest EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments to Ireland last year were not just to farmers but beef barons, Arab sheikhs and a religious order.
The 2017 list of CAP beneficiaries, published by the Department of Agriculture, shows that Larry Goodman and his family, the Emirates’ Maktoum family and Bord Bia all received hundreds of thousands of euro.
The figures come as the EU Commission publishes proposals to reform CAP, including recommendations EU farm payments are capped at €60,000.
And, just last week, Teagasc published its annual farm survey which showed substantially different farm incomes across sectors, with the average dairy farm income at €87,000 while approximately half of all beef farms had a farm income of
€10,000 or less in 2017. One of the largest EU payments in 2017 was to Larry Goodman and his family, who received more than €422,000 through their two farms, Branganstown and Glydee, in EU payments – down from the
€430,000 received in 2016. Kildangan Stud, owned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (inset below), the ruler of Dubai, received
€150,000, while Godolphin Ireland, owned by the Maktoum family, received €182,158.
Numerous county councils and Leader groups got significant money from the EU, while Bord Bia received €2.8m.
Individual farmers who got significant EU farm payments included Wexford farmer Walter Furlong, who has built up a large grain production outfit with his business partner Kevin Cooney.
Between them, they own the Cooney Furlong Grain Company. Mr Furlong farms around
3,500 acres of land in Wexford and between the two they got more than
€410,000. Vegetable farmers O’Shea, who recently secured a
€70m contract to supply Aldi with potatoes, got €238,989.
Dublin farmers Michael and Gabriel Hoey, who own Country Crest, got €182,854. In January, it extended its deal with Tesco Ireland to supply all potatoes, onions and sweet potatoes to the supermarket in a deal worth more than €60m.
Holy Ghost Fathers, which runs Rockwell College and a substantial 1,100-acre dairy farm outside Cashel, got
€150,228.
Peter and John Queally, benefited from more than €217,000 in CAP funding. The Queally brothers, along with Dan Browne, set up Dawn Meats in
1980. They were in 59th place on the ‘Sunday Independent’ Rich List with a reported worth of €295m, up from €270m on 2017. The privately owned company handles about 20pc of Ireland’s beef.
Meat processor Kepak’s farm in Ratoath, which is owned by the Keating family, got
€179,868. The Kepak farm finishes around
3,500 cattle a year. Farmers are bracing themselves for significant farm payment cuts with the proposed details of the CAP
post-2020 to be launched in Brussels today. Where the axe falls will be tied up in what happens to the wider 2021-27 EU budget, which is unlikely to be agreed before the end of the current European Commission’s term in office in 2019.