Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue wants to have the measures for the livestock sector to cut emissions signed off on by the end of the year, the Irish Farmers Journal understands.

The measures will be formulated from the Food Vision dairy and beef and sheep groups.

Minister McConalogue told the Macra conference on Saturday that he is considering the dairy group’s report, while he received the interim beef and sheep group report on Wednesday.

“We’ll have to agree our climate action plan by the end of this year, it’s important that both of those [reports] feed into that,” he said.

Exit

He told the conference the retirement scheme proposal from the dairy group was responding to “the fact that there is a sense that some dairy farmers want to exit”.

“That group have considered the fact that there is a segment of farmers in dairy who would opt out because they’ve got to that stage in their career, but that needs to be renewed as well by young farmers coming into the sector.

“Meat proteins and milk proteins will continue to be the backbone of our agricultural system, but alongside that we have to be productive in a way that reduces emissions as well and also is very attentive to how we intertwine with the environment around us.”