Former Government colleagues Simon Coveney and Phil Hogan met in Brussels on Thursday 27 August. The two men were meeting in advance of the extraordinary Council of Agriculture Minister meeting on the 7 September.

A number of countries have met Hogan in advance of the extraordinary meeting in order to highlight the particular challenges facing their countries, including Latvia and Lithuania, whose prime ministers were present alongside their agriculture ministers at the meetings earlier this week.

Speaking after his meeting with Hogan, Coveney called on Europe to consider utilising more extreme measures to help farmers and their incomes throughout this current crisis.

He said the Council and Parliament had previously acknowledged that traditional market support measures might not be sufficient to deal with market disturbance, and that therefore "exceptional" measures may need to be used against market disturbance.

"These provisions are designed with maximum flexibility and rapid action in mind, and I think it is time now to exploit these possibilities,” the minister said.

Coveney presented a number of options to help farmers to the Commissioner at Thursday's meeting. These included temporarily increasing the threshold prices for butter and skim milk powder levels to a realistic floor price, as well as the use of exceptional promotion measures to promote the consumption of dairy and pigmeat products on EU markets.

The minister then travelled to Paris where he met with the French minister for agriculture Stephane Le Foll and discussed the six-point plan which he had presented to the Commission.

Although the minister welcomed the opportunity to discuss the plan with Commissioner Hogan on Thursday, no decision is likely to be made on his requests until the Council meeting in September.