Meath and Waterford IFA have put forward motions asking IFA national council to review the pay increases awarded to IFA leadership in recent weeks.

The motions were agreed at meetings of the executives over the past week.

Members of Meath IFA speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal expressed frustration that regional chair Frank Brady brought the Monaghan county chair Patrick McCormick to the recent Meath meeting to support him in his attempt to argue against the motion.

Former Meath IFA chair John Curran said Brady had no business bringing McCormick to a Meath meeting “uninvited and unannounced.”

‘Unjustified’

Curran said there was a “very heated discussion” and that it was “unanimous that the [increases] weren’t justified”. He said that Brady and McCormick “hadn’t a leg to stand on”.

The Meath farmer said giving the director general “€30,000 of a pay increase looks desperate” and that the unhappiness over the issue among IFA members has been “self-inflicted”.

Former Waterford county chair Kevin Kiersey said that Waterford IFA branch’s issue is only with the increase in salaries for the president and deputy president, not the director general.

“The salaries should be reviewed again and presented to council to allow them time to have a proper discussion on it.

“Our view was that the increase given was excessive and a more moderate increase would have been more appropriate,” he said.

Current county chair John Heffernan said that the feeling among Waterford farmers was always going to be against pay increases in the IFA, given the outcome of CAP negotiations.

“Waterford is a county that will suffer a lot more from convergence than practically any other. We are badly hit,” he said.