ICMSA president John Comer: “We met Ministers Noonan and Howlin on September 17 and stressed that ICMSA wanted a Budget that was going to employ both logic and imagination in terms of dealing with the challenges and issues of Irish farming next year and going forward.

“We think that the income averaging measures introduced in 2015 are already an unalloyed success but that farmers would benefit from having the option of choosing between three-year and five-year averaging.

“In addition, we heavily recommend that the ministers look at further measures to combat precisely the kind of destructive 30% to 40% swings in income from year-to-year that make it impossible to operate with any kind of stability or income-outgoings balance. We specifically recommended either a direct cut-and-paste of the Australian’s government’s Farm Management Deposit Scheme (FMDS) or some variant of it.”

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Macra na Feirme president Sean Finan: “Supporting this generation of young farmers and new entrants to establish and progress in farming is fundamental to the sustainability and long-term competitiveness of Irish agriculture.

“A favourable taxation policy in the budget for young farmers is essential to ensure they are well positioned to meet the challenges and deliver growth and prosperity for the agricultural sector into the future. Young farmers need to be installed on holdings at a young age, when they have the energy and time to develop their enterprises and time to achieve their full potential.

“Despite the recent increased interest in agricultural education, challenges remain in terms of the demographic of Irish agriculture. For Irish farming to expand, it requires an increase in the proportion of younger farmers and the budget has an important role in helping to achieve this.”

ICOS president Martin Keane: “The agri-food sector has played a key role in Ireland’s economic recovery. ICOS believes that the introduction of the following measures in Budget 2016 would assist in sustaining that recovery.

“ICOS calls for the introduction of an income deferral scheme managed by co-ops, whereby farmers can move a portion of their pre-tax income from years they need it least, to years when it is most needed. We support the introduction of a form of tax relief for co-ops similar to existing R&D tax credit guidelines. This would be aimed at supporting best practice in environmental sustainability. The objective is to encourage increased research and knowledge transfer needed to drive the sustainability agenda at farm level.

“Agri taxation measures related to partnerships, share farming and contract rearing of heifers should be reviewed in order to encourage farmers to participate in collaborative farming. The audit exemption currently available to companies should be available to small scale co-ops on a similar basis.

ICSA president Paddy Kent: “We have had under-spending on the sector in 2015 due to hold-ups in getting GLAS, TAMS and the discussion groups programme off the ground, as well as damage done during the austerity years to the Disadvantaged Area Payment.

“Now that we see plans to reverse public sector pay cuts, there is no reason to treat farmers differently. The reduction of the maximum area for DAS payments from 45ha to 30ha has hit farmers in marginal areas and we want to see plans to bring that payment back up.

“We also see a huge need to help the sheep sector – key areas here include allowing sheep fencing back into TAMS and allowing sheep farmers to participate in two knowledge transfer groups.”