The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICSMA) has called for an extension to the national liming programme.

Deputy president and chair of the farm and rural affairs committee Denis Drennan said that it is bizarre to expect farmers to put down more lime in 11-odd weeks to 31 October than they did in the whole of 2022.

"We're back again in the familiar impasse that has submission deadlines falling mere weeks after applicants are told they’ve been accepted.

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“This is the usual sequencing mystery where claims for payments under the liming programme must be submitted by 31 October despite the fact that they have only just received the letters confirming participation in the programme in recent weeks,"he said.

Optimum period

The ICMSA also highlights that that deadline will fall "slap bang" in the middle of the optimum period for spreading lime to get the best results.

"Even if they had got the acceptance letters – which bizarrely only arrived in the last fortnight – the adverse weather meant that there were large swathes of the country where there was no way that anyone could have spread lime for the last six weeks.

"So we have several factors here that make the 31 October deadline as unworkable as it is unrealistic," said Drennan.

The ICMSA deputy president added that where farmers were eager to follow best environmental practice that the responsibility was clearly on the Department to facilitate that choice.

“[The] ICSMA acknowledges and welcomes the increase in the budget for the national liming programme from €8m to €16m. However, it is not enough.

"The figure for applications is 41,000 farmers with an average tonnage sought of 111t per applicant, meaning the scheme requires a budget of at least €72m.

"The most a farmer can get approval for is 40t at €16/t, which means the maximum a farmer will receive is €640.

Last year's figures

"But then we look at last year’s figures and we see that farmers used 1.42m tonnes of lime over the whole year and we see that, thanks to the Department’s bizarre timeframe for this year’s liming programme, for the farmers concerned to draw down this very modest payment they will have to spread around 1.6m tonnes of lime in just the 11-odd weeks between receipt of their letters and the submissions deadline of 31 October," said Drennan.

The ICMSA urged the Department to announce an immediate and meaningful extension to the liming programme and work through the glitches that are and will continue to arise in the ongoing programme.