Unprecedented crowd of hill farmers vent anger at Mayo meeting

United front as unprecedented crowd of hill farmers vent their anger at Mayo meeting


Anton McNulty

They came in their hundreds and they came with a simple message to the Minister of Agriculture and his Department and that was they have had enough and they want the controversial collective agreement scrapped.
Over 1,700 hill farmers from Mayo, Connemara, Leitrim, Sligo and as far away as Inishowen and Cork travelled to the Knockranny House Hotel in Westport to vent their anger at what they perceived as discriminatory protocols to stop them from joining the new GLAS environmental scheme.
The meeting was organised by the Concerned Hill Farmer Action Group who called on hill farmers to put on a united front to oppose collective agreement to ensure they secure their livelihoods into the future.
The collective agreement requires 50 per cent of neighbouring farmers to an agreement on farming strategy of commonage areas, which farmers say is ‘unworkable’. There was also concerns that farmers’ single farm payments will also ‘in serious danger’.
The meeting was chaired by Cllr Michael Holmes who said that ‘people power’ was needed to persuade Minister Simon Coveney to change his mind.
Colm O’Donnell from Sligo who spoke for the organisation said the criteria for joining GLAS was a ‘road block’ to stop hill farmers joining and accessing European funding.
“There is €580m in Pillar II but already before we make applications to apply to the scheme we are being discriminated against as hill farmers and in the GLAS scheme there are road blocks put in our way by this Minister. We are farming the most sensitive land but we are being denied an equal playing field to get into the GLAS scheme.
“He [Minister] incentivises the most productive farmers in the country, farmers who are very productive and intensive farmers. They prioritise those farmers to get into GLAS ahead of the people in this room tonight and that is not acceptable,” he said to loud applause.
Brendan Joyce, who also spoke for the organisation said that collective agreement was ‘impossible’ and ‘unacceptable’ and they were suggesting an alternative approach.
“We are asking for minimum activity to be set at a rate of 0.05 livestock units per hectare. That rate will entitle you to make your single farm application next spring and not this collective agreement rammed down our throats by this minister. We are asking instead of collective agreement, it should be replace by a minimum grazing number and we want our politicians to back that,” he said.
Three local MEPs, Marian Harkin, Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan and Matt Carthy along with Galway West Fine Gael TD, SeΡn Kyne also addressed the meeting.
Deputy Kyne said he did not agree with all Minister Coveney did but explained the reason the he introduced the collective agreement was because he felt ‘something over and above’ must have been done to get approval for Pillar II from the EU Commission.
All three MEPs said they will work together to stop collective agreement going through with Marian Harkin explaining that the only person who will change collective agreement was the Minister and this battle had to be fought at home and not just in Brussels.
‘Ming’ Flanagan said Minister Coveney knew what he was doing when he was introducing collective agreement and that was to sacrifice hill farmers ‘for the ranchers and the intensive farmers’.
There was anger from the floor with many speakers calling for a united front to gather support from around the country and march on Dublin.