Farmers in Sligo lose out under current CAP payments – Harkin
SLIGO TD Marian Harkin has said that it makes no sense that current CAP payments are linked to production levels in 2000, describing it as” illogical and unfair”.
She was speaking during a debate in the Dail with Agriculture Minister McConalogue on the current CAP negotiations.
Deputy Harkin referenced the change in the previous CAP where 30% of Pillar 1 payments went to greening measures.
“In Ireland we had, and still have, the situation where two farmers in the same county doing exactly the same measures under greening were paid significantly different amounts per hectare. This difference could be up to €100 per hectare, and that was fundamentally wrong because both farmers were completing precisely the same measures,” she said. Deputy Harkin asserted that many farmers in the West of Ireland were “sold a pup with false promises” around rural development payments that were supposed to compensate for minimal moves on convergence in Pillar 1 payments.
She said that REPs was “eviscerated” and payments for rural development measures were less than in the previous CAP.
According to Deputy Harkin, the majority of farmers in counties like Sligo, Leitrim, Donegal and Roscommon lost out in both Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 payments in the last CAP and she said “these farmers cannot lose again”.
She said that she recognised that some intensive farmers on low acreage could be disproportionately affected by convergence and said that in that context voluntary coupled payments would assist as would frontloading the Pillar 1 payments.