Beef Plan Movement

The Beef Plan Movement held meetings or spoke over the phone with all of the farm organisations ahead of Monday’s talks, Enda Fingleton, southeast chair of the Beef Plan, said.

He said the commitment of a review of the grid was “absolutely massive” for farmers and that the 30 month rule is a red line for farmers. “The big thing is for farmers to respect the talks and allow them to come to a conclusion. Under no circumstances should farmers break the line and go back to protesting, until there is an outcome [from the talks]. We don’t want anything to jeopardise the talks,” he said.

IFA

Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed must be at beef talks when they resume, IFA president Joe Healy said. He said factories and the minister needed to put real money on the table and the minister’s absence was surprising. The IFA called for a price index to delivery full transparency on margins at the talks and said age limits, movement restrictions, weight limits, excessive trim and insurance payments were all being used against farmers.

ICMSA

Progress in the talks will depend on how the meat industry responds to “reasonable and sensible proposals”, ICMSA president Pat McCormack said.

McCormack said the proposals were not the major areas of contention but if the factories were unwilling to engage on these issues, he saw it as a bad sign for changes in more substantial areas. He said factories must accept that the present system did not work for farmers and things could not continue as they were.

ICSA

The crisis in the beef sector continues despite some progress at beef talks, ICSA president Edmond Phelan warned.

Phelan said farmers could only sustain so many losses and that factories and retailers needed to reflect on that before “the whole house of cards comes falling down”.

He said issues discussed would require negotiation and that the main issue of price continued to pose a threat to the viability of the beef sector.

INHFA

While talks focused on delivering improvements for finished stock, INHFA’s Brendan Joyce said it was important that there was something for suckler farmers not selling through factories. He welcomed a commitment by Bord Bia to assist in the development of a suckler beef brand. Bord Bia was to seek €3m in EU funding for a promotion of suckler beef in Europe. Joyce said improved returns for suckler farmers could be achieved by “re-branding of our naturally reared suckler beef”.

Macra na Feirme

Macra president Thomas Duffy welcomed movement on a number of fronts at the talks. “We expect MII to honour the commitments given to address the remaining issues. A number of issues had unanimous support from [the farm groups].”