Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) president Francie Gorman has said he is looking to turn the association’s focus back to the bread and butter issues affecting farmers as an independent governance review of Bord Bia’s board is due to get under way.

Post-2027 CAP negotiations, the EU-Mercosur free trade deal, stubbornly high levels of bovine TB, the arrival of bluetongue and fertiliser cost pressures are among the “hugely important” items on Gorman’s agenda.

“I'm glad and I probably shouldn't say this because at the next executive I will probably get skewered on TB, CAP or something, but I'm glad that we'll be actually getting back to doing the job we’re supposed to be doing,” Gorman told Meath IFA’s AGM in Navan on Monday night.

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Gorman said that the IFA’s national council is to be faced with “tough decisions” on the future of farm payments as the association forms its position on the next CAP.

A new active farmer definition will be an area to be examined over the coming months, as well as the possibility of steering schemes back towards the headage payment model, the IFA president said.

Response to protest critics

Strong support was voiced from the floor for the actions taken by the IFA on the controversy surrounding Bord Bia’s chair Larry Murrin over recent weeks.

Gorman took the occasion of the protest’s suspension earlier in the day to address talking points raised by critics of the association’s handling of its grievances with Bord Bia and its chair.

“I think everybody needs to reflect on - even maybe ourselves - the language used in this debate,” the IFA president commented.

“Politicians certainly need to reflect in the language that they use and maybe if we can all have a little bit more respect for ourselves, farmers, politicians, Bord Bia going forward, I think that'd be a good outcome to this.”

Language used by Government figures suggesting that the IFA had aligned with elements of the opposition was called out by Gorman.

“We always got into bed with the opposition,” he said.

“It's just a different opposition now to the one we had 25 years ago and there needs to be little bit more respect on the government side of the house for that.

“That's what we do. We use the opposition. We use the opposition to put pressure on the government. It's always been like that and we do it in a respectful way.”

Gorman also said that criticisms implying that bridges had been burned or that political capital had been used fail to acknowledge the reasons this clout had been accumulated for.

“I hate this phrase ‘burning political capital’, but I've been asked about it on numerous occasions. Capital is there to be spent and maybe we spent a good bit of it this time around, but we go gathering it up again.”