The figure is included in the CSO’s preliminary estimates of the agricultural price indices for 2015, released on Tuesday 10 November. The estimates show an overall 3.5% decrease in output prices from 2014 levels. Milk is the biggest loser in this estimate, with a decrease of 22.7% on 2014.
The next biggest price drop is for pigs, which has fallen by 7.7% compared with 2014.
The estimates from the CSO are based on published monthly indices from January to August, and forecast estimates for September to December.
Reacting to the news of the large fall in milk price, Pat McCormack, deputy president of the Irish Creamery and Milk Supplier Association (ICMSA), said this “clearly demonstrates the extent of problems affecting our ‘flagship’ agricultural product.”
“The first year of the post-quota era was shaping up to be a severe letdown for both the dairy sector and the wider economy,” he said, “with widespread and growing anxiety amongst milk suppliers being compounded by the complete lack of any coherent dairy policy on either the domestic or EU level.”
McCormack said the full extent of the collapse in value of dairy output would be felt in every part of the country, but would be especially severe in the dairy-intensive areas of Munster and south Leinster.
For example, the ICMSA is estimating that the fall in milk prices will result in a drop in overall spending of €111m in Co Tipperary alone. McCormack added that in the face of this huge challenge, the Government’s policy seemed to be one of “crossing their fingers and hoping for the best”, a policy he has deemed wholly inadequate in the face of what he said was a “national economic reversal”.
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