IFA

IFA president Joe Healy said urgent changes need to be made to the details of the scheme. The exclusion of prime beef animals from all mixed enterprise farms involving beef and dairy production is wrong, he said.

It is important that the scheme has a provision to take account of force majeure circumstances.

The IFA has said that the money should be targeted at the farmers who incurred the losses and the sectors who need it most in terms of income and finished cattle sold in the marts must be included.

INHFA

Payments to suckler farmers under the €100m BEAM scheme should be front-loaded on a set number of cows, INHFA president Colm O’Donnell said.

The proposal needs to be tweaked in favour of the smaller suckler herd.

“The national [suckler] farm herd size is between 15 and 16 cows. Our position on this as we outlined to the minister and his staff is that it should be front-loaded – a targeted payment on the first number of cows, with a digressive payment.”

ICSA

ICSA president Edmund Phelan called for an increase in the upper limit for beef finisher cattle from 100 to 200 head.

“Full-time winter finishers have suffered massive losses and it is vital that they are back at the ring for the sake of all suckler and store producers.

“The ICSA argued that it is possible to increase the upper limit to 200 head without affecting the rate of €100/head simply by explicitly excluding factory feedlots.”

ICMSA

Pat McCormack, ICMSA president, said members feel aggrieved that their losses are not being recouped. “Dairy farmers have suffered losses. That line in the legislation [which excludes dairy farmers] needs to be withdrawn and all farmers need to be eligible. There are other ways you could cut the cake. To exclude dairy farmers is discriminatory. There will be farmers who find it hard to cut back on organic nitrogen to qualify for the scheme. By qualifying they will be buying in less stores in the autumn. That in itself is reducing demand at the ringside.”

Beef Plan Movement

The €100m BEAM fund should be bigger and farmers are only getting a third of the money needed to cover the losses sustained, acting co-chair of the Beef Plan Movement Eamon Corley has said.

“We put in a submission to Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed that the damage was €250m – that covered September to May. What has transpired is that farmers only got a small fraction of money for the damage. It’s got drastically worse since.”

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