Hill farmers welcome Brussels clarification on GLAS

Hill farmers welcome Brussels clarification on GLAS


Anton McNulty

Although hill farmers have welcomed the prospect of a meeting with members of the European Commission regarding their concerns with the proposed rural development programme, they say they hope ‘common sense’ prevails before that.
MEP Marian Harkin has revealed that European Commission told her that the programme can still be changed, despite it being sent to Brussels for approval. Ms Harkin made the statement at a meeting with hill farmers in Letterkenny on Friday night.
The Letterkenny meeting was attended by up to 900 farmers, and a similar meeting is scheduled to take place in Cork next week as the campaign to make changes to the plan heats up.
Ms Harkin explained that she was facilitating a meeting between the hill farmers and the European Commission so they can outline their grievances.
“This is a matter for national politics, as I stated at a previous meeting of hill farmers in Westport, but the rural development programme proposed to the European Commission by the Minister has not yet been approved.
“I have been in contact with the Commission, and I am prepared to organise a meeting for hill farmers in Brussels so they can explain the practicalities of commonage farming and point out that the minister’s current proposals are unrealistic and are not conducive to meeting the needs of productive hill farmers or the environment,” the Independent MEP said.

Huge turnout
Brendan Joyce of the Concerned Hill Farmer Action Group told The Mayo News that Ms Harkin confirmed the farmers’ views and that he hopes the Minister will act and change the criteria.
“There was a huge turnout in Donegal … this is not just a Mayo, Sligo or Galway issue. Marian Harkin has agreed to facilitate a meeting in Brussels, which is due to take place in two weeks’ time, but we would hope that common sense would prevail and the meeting can be called off. There is a window of opportunity for doing that.
“We read the legislation and knew this could be changed, but this [Ms Harkin’s revelation] is independent clarification from Europe and that is significant,” he said.
Meanwhile, Minister for Argriculture Simon Coveney released a statement clarifying issues relating to the GLAS scheme. He said there would be no imposition of minimum or maximum stocking densities for commonages, but that the collective agreement criteria for commonage farmers stood. This came as a disappointed to Mr Joyce.
“In a certain respect it was a move in the right direction, but collective agreement has not been dealt with. We are not happy that the key issue of collective agreement is still there … The planners say it is unworkable, and we say it is discriminative against hill farmers.”
Meanwhile, the Concerned Hill Farmer Action Group distanced themselves from the actions of another farming group, Farm Family Rights Group who held a separate protest outside Enda Kenny’s office during which two rams entered the building. Footage of the incident seemed to show the rams being ushered into the office by protestors, despite their claims last week that the animals ran in of their own accord. The two rams were subsequently brought to the pound.
Ger Deere, the parliamentary assistant to Mr Kenny, has since said that he felt the actions taken by protesters during the Farm Family Rights Group were ‘out of order’.