Sean Farrell, Head of Agriculture at Bank of Ireland, made the comment at the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine yesterday afternoon.

The meeting was the third in a series of discussions focussing on dairy price volatility and heard presentations by AIB, Ulster Bank and Bank of Ireland on their respective lending packages for farmers in the run-up to the abolition of milk quotas in April 2015.

In what is good news for the sector, Farrell said the bank’s research also found that debt levels in Ireland were below European counterparts.

Requirements for lending packages

In response to a question by Labour Deputy Willie Penrose on tailoring lending packages for farmers, representatives from all three banks said they recognised all farmers’ needs are different and they would try to amend their packages accordingly.

Ailish Byrne, Senior Agricultural Manager with Ulster Bank said that cashflow budgets and costs of production were the two key requirements for farmers to have in place in order to avail of their particular range of loans.

Dr Anne Finnegan, Head of the Agri Sector with AIB, said that due to the volatility in the market at the moment AIB will be lending to farmers that have capital investment plans and who have a long-term budget plan.

Sean Farrell of BOI said the bank had seen an increase in farm building and development requests in the last number of months and that requests for cashflow support are also expected to grow. He added that the two major cashflow issues at the moment are tax payments and superlevy issues and said that Bank of Ireland is acutely conscious of the need to re-schedule debt in relation to this.