The Government must deliver the €28m suckler scheme announced in last year’s budget, the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association (ICSA) has insisted.

ICSA president Dermot Kelleher said the scheme must be made available to farmers without “further delay and without any unnecessary restrictions”.

The ICSA is also demanding action and results on the proposed suckler beef premium brand.

Speaking following a recent meeting with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue, Kelleher said there was an immediate need for a simple scheme that would suit suckler farmers.

'Onerous conditions'

“We have some 20,000 applicants for the SCEP [Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme] which is just one-third of suckler farmers,” the ICSA president pointed out.

“Many have been put off by onerous conditions such as the five-year contract, the reference amount, the requirement to be a member of the SBLAS quality assurance scheme or concerns about the stars requirement.

"Many suckler farmers are in the older cohort and it is unfair to expect them to commit to five years,” Kelleher said.

“We also must maximise the attractiveness of the scheme by having no ceilings on numbers whether through a reference or an upper limit.

"Dairy farmers have a ceiling for TAMS grants of 120 cows, so [the] ICSA is demanding suckler farmers should not be limited to 30 or 40 cows in a scheme which is much more critical to them.”

Suckler brand

In relation to the suckler brand, ICSA suckler chair Jimmy Cosgrave told a meeting of the suckler development group that he is disappointed with progress to date.

“We were told a year ago that there is potential for this in Germany, but we have heard very little since," Cosgrave said.

"We are now rapidly moving to a scenario where, with genotyping under the suckler schemes and the new genotyping programme, suckler beef can be verified by DNA and this must be used to deliver a serious premium price to the suckler sector,” he maintained.