Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue is continuing to monitor sheep prices and will seek to improve supports where possible, as sheep farmer margins have plummeted over the past year.
“I will seek to make improvements. I would like to always be able to do more. Obviously, you have to work with the budget you have,” the Minister told senators on Wednesday.
Minister McConalogue said that he is “working to avail of any opportunity I can to support the sector” and that he is “looking ahead to build on the supports we already have in place”.
However, he did not yet pledge any increase in supports in his remarks and pointed to existing schemes, like the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES), that he says can bolster farm incomes.
“Any sheep farmer that applied – and the vast majority would have – is in ACRES this year and that is a very good level of confidence and certainty for them.”
The minister stated that sheep farmers have been the sector which “benefited the most” from the pillar one payment reforms of frontloading and convergence in the new CAP.
Calls for support
Both Government and opposition senators called for the urgent introduction of additional sheep farmer support payments.
Senator Paul Daly, a party colleague of Minister McConalogue, challenged the Minister on his emphasis on environmental payments to support income.
“A lot of that money is environmentally based as opposed to production or product-based,” Daly said on ACRES and organic payments.
“And at the end of the day, while it might help the farm family get from A to B with a little more ease, it is not targeted at the sheep sector.”
Fine Gael Senator Tim Lombard stated that a “really significant package” had been brought forward for the pig sector in the height of its 2022 crisis and that a similar support scheme is needed to ensure sheep farmer viability.
“I think a package like that needs to be looked at now. A package to ensure the viability of the sheep sector in the short term is required,” Senator Lombard told the Minister.
“That is an issue that needs to be taken to Cabinet in a very short period of time.”
