Hill farmers furious at IFA ‘sell-out’

Farmers furious at IFA ‘sell-out’


Mayo members lash out at their national executive

Anton McNulty

The National Executive of the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) has been accused of selling out hill and commonage farmers by agreeing to Department of Agriculture proposals for a new environmental scheme.
In an unprecedented attack on the IFA national executive, hill farmers accused their own organisation of selling out their members, being weak in negotiations with the Department of Agriculture and undermining the credibility of the organisation’s county representatives.
The farmers are mainly angry at the IFA’s decision to agree to the 50 percent collective-agreement criteria for commonage farmers in joining the new GLAS scheme, despite being told this was a ‘redline issue’ and should be rejected.
The IFA’s agreement with the Department and the Minister to adopt these criteria has sparked a furious reaction from hill farmers in Mayo and other west-of-Ireland counties.
Co Mayo has around 3,300 commonage farmers – the highest number of any county in Ireland. The consequences of the new criteria will be hardest felt in Mayo and in Connemara.

Red-line issue
Following a meeting held last Monday, local IFA representatives (including Colm O’Donnell, National IFA Rural Development Vice Chairman; Eugene Needham, Mayo IFA Rural Development Chairman; Martin Gavin, former Mayo IFA Chairman) and IFA representatives from Donegal, Galway, Sligo and Leitrim signed a statement where they voiced their anger at the IFA’s decision.
“IFA at national level have sold out hill and commonage farmers throughout the country by agreeing to the Department’s proposals for the new GLAS Scheme,” the statement began.
“The shift in position by the negotiation team on the collective agreement who gave in to the Minister during final talks on the Rural Development Program has shown weakness and total disrespect for the root-and-branch protocol which the association takes pride in as being its strength on the ground.
“The failure of the IFA negotiating team to stick to what is a red-line issue for commonage farmers has led to a lack of confidence and trust by the grassroots of the organisation and has undermined the credibility of the county representatives who have worked hard on these farmers behalf,” they wrote.

No future
Under the collective agreement criteria, 50 percent of commonage farmers in an area will all have to come to an agreement before any of them will be able to join the GLAS scheme.
The Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney, has forwarded the draft Rural Development Program to Brussels for approval but despite this farmers have called on him to make the necessary changes to the programme.
A meeting was due to take place in Tuam last night between farmers and members of the IFA Rural Development Committee to discuss what actions the farmers can take reverse the Ministers decision.
Achill farmer and former Chairman of the IFA Hill Committee Tom Fadian told The Mayo News that there was anger among farmers that the IFA ‘hierarchy’ had chosen to ‘ignore’ their warnings on the-collective agreement criteria. He said if the criteria is allowed to stay in place he sees no future for hill farming in Achill, which could lose up to €3.6 million from the local economy as a result.

Let down
“There is huge anger at the IFA and for the likes of myself and other representatives in the IFA locally our word is worthless at the moment,” Tom Fadian said. “We fell totally let down by the association. They were warned and warned that the 50 per cent criteria had to go but they chose to ignore it. I don’t think they understood the seriousness of the situation.
“The 50 per cent criteria is totally unworkable and should be taken out altogether. If it goes ahead farmers in commonage areas will just get out of farming. That will have a huge impact on places like Achill where around €3.6 million in payments and subsidies come into the parish from agriculture. Such an economic loss will have a huge impact on every business in the parish,” he said.
In addition to the criteria for qualifying for GLAS, the Department are also introducing new rules in 2015 defining an active farmer which will also have consequences for commonage farmers, whereby those who do not put stock on the commonage will not be eligible for the Single Farm Payment.
Achill councillor Paul McNamara said the loss of €3.6 million to the Achill economy would be ‘unimaginable’, and he called on Minister Coveney to reverse his decision.
“€3.6 million comes into the parish of Achill every year in subsidies and grants and all of that will be lost because Achill farmers are commonage users. Area aid, area based payments and GLAS are in jeopardy because if farmers do not meet the 50 per cent collective criteria they will not qualify.
“Every farmer must put their stock on the commonage and if they don’t they won’t get any payment. There is no way that farmers have to be responsible for what other farmers do. There are approximately 300 farmers in Achill and if this is allowed to go through, farming in Achill will soon become a thing of the past.
“I feel the Minister is only concerned about the inland farmers and he just doesn’t care about the hill farmers and those on marginal land,” Cllr McNamara told The Mayo News.