In 2023, effectively 100% of all family farm income came from direct payments, director of policy with IFA Tadhg Buckley outlined at Tuesday night’s CAP conference.

Based on most recent National Farm Survey data, Buckley said that the figures paint a stark picture of how important direct payments are to the vast majority of farm enterprises in Ireland.

Direct payments are crucial in supporting and stabilising agricultural income, Buckley argued, and added that the speculation around proposing a single budget approach would have substantial drawbacks.

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This approach, he added, could potentially lead to there being no dedicated agriculture budget allocation by Europe.

Power

It would also put a lot more power in the hands of national governments.

This, Buckley said, could be negative during a difficult economic period where national spend might has to be trimmed.

“Another option is that they may merge pillar one and pillar two,” he said.

“If that happened it would be particularly difficult for the vulnerable sectors in Ireland who get a huge amount of their overall income from pillar two scheme,” he warned.

A fully-funded, simplified CAP is needed, with farmers and food production at its core, the IFA director of policy told farmers and Irish and European politicians gathered at the Kildare conference on Tuesday night.

“We need stability in regulations which we have not had in a long period of time,” he urged.