There is mounting pressure on the Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon to announce a targeted fertiliser support package for farmers.

Ireland was allocated €15m earlier this year under the EU crisis reserve fund to support farmers impacted by the surge in fertiliser prices, and this package can be supplemented to the tune of 200% or €30m in national funding.

However, Minister Heydon has not as yet announced a fertiliser support measure.

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There have been suggestions that some of the €58m in unused funds from the Fuel Income Support Scheme – which had a total budget of €85m –could be redirected towards the fertiliser package.

IFA farm business chair Bill O’Keeffe said it was “absolutely vital that these funds do not return to the exchequer and instead stay with the Department of Agriculture”.

“Supporting farmers through a period of stubbornly high fertiliser costs has to be considered as a logical option for some of this fund,” he said.

ICMSA president Denis Drennan said it “was essential” that a targeted fertiliser scheme be “announced immediately”.

“Other member states have announced their packages and Ireland should follow suit immediately,” Drennan claimed.

The Department of Agriculture should use the fertiliser register to target the support at “those farmers who were actually most impacted by the inflated fertiliser prices”, the ICMSA leader added.

This view was shared by ICOS.

At a meeting with Minister Heydon this week, an ICOS delegation called for the unallocated fuel support funds to be retained within agriculture and identified targeted fertiliser supports as a possible area in which they could be used.