All farmers will see a drop in direct payments from Europe unless the CAP budget is fully-funded, Fianna Fáil spokesperson on agriculture Charlie McConalogue has said.

Speaking in response to a question from the Irish Farmers Journal at the party’s agriculture manifesto launch, he said the budget needs to be protected.

“Unless the charge is led by the Irish Government, all farmers will see a drop in relation to their payments across the board and also in relation to pillar two [where agri-environmental schemes are funded from].

“We don’t want that to happen we want to ensure that budget is protected. We don’t believe either that the [last] Government have been strong enough in that regard,” he said.

“The EU budget as proposed at the moment, the overall figure is planned to go up, but the agriculture slice of that pie is to drop. That’s not acceptable, we can’t have a situation where farmers are being asked to do more for less, particularly when farmers are losing money.

“That’s simply not sustainable."

Convergence

In relation to convergence, McConalogue said: "At this stage it is clear that a minimum of 75% will be required over the next seven years, the outgoing seven years brought it to 60%. There is a lot of pressure on at European level for it to be higher than that.

“In relation to the transition period, which is going to be required for at least a year or potentially two of the next seven-year CAP programme, we would continue the convergence process towards that minimum during that period. Our key objective here is to get the budget situation addressed, because farmers need to be paid for the hard work that they do.

“They deserve an income, they can’t be asked to do more for less,” he said.

Contentious redistribution of direct payments

Fianna Fáil TD Jackie Cahill said that ensuring a maximum CAP budget is essential and that the distribution of CAP money is going to be contentious.

He said that the reference years used to draw down payments need to be recognised.

“There’s a lot of farmers out there who weren’t farming when the base years were initiated, so I think that’s going to be an issue as well. Also you have farmers on smaller acreages who would have high payments per hectare – I think that’s an issue that’s going to have to be addressed as well.

“There will be arguments here at home as to what way the CAP is distributed but we have to have the money first. We also have the issue of forgotten farmers who feel very let down over the reference years as well but there’s more of them coming on stream as we move further away from the reference years,” Cahill said.

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