The Dealer hears that last week’s front-page headline on the Irish Farmers Journal caused a few ructions in farm organisations last Thursday.

The Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) moved quickly on Thursday to distance itself from any talk of a reduction scheme, with IFA livestock chair Brendan Golden saying it hadn’t been discussed with the IFA at all.

Macra then followed, also poo-pooing the idea.

Discussion

It seems a lot more was discussed in the last few days, as, at Tuesday night’s IFA meeting in Cavan, IFA director general Damian McDonald had a lot more detail on the proposal, which farm organisations said “wasn’t discussed”, including a number of conditions that the IFA had put forward on funding and participation in such a reduction scheme, should the proposal be put forward.

A number of calls from the floor at Tuesday night’s meeting called for the IFA to be big and brave enough to look at the proposal before the idea was shot down.