Government ‘should be ashamed’ of collapsed farm incomes says Kilkenny farm leader

The President of ICMSA, Denis Drennan, has said that last month’s Teagasc National Farm Survey, shows a 69% collapse in dairy farm incomes in just the last year.

Mr. Drennan said that government’s inaction in the face of the collapse in farmer incomes and the value of the agriculture sector had moved past ‘just’ hapless confusion and contradictions must now be deemed deliberate and a matter of state policy.

“Try and imagine any other occupation in Ireland working a 60-hour week where a government agency produces figures showing a fall income in just a single calendar year of almost 70%? Try and imagine a situation in, for instance, the public sector where any group of workers were asked to just shrug and accept a fall in income of even 7% - still less 70%. Imagine the response and imagine the Government falling over itself to apologise and come forward with reasons explaining away the fall in income. Our farmers – arguably the best in the world – are losing their livelihoods and the Irish Government just shrugs and moves on preparing the next round of ‘green’ regulations or useless and half-baked schemes aimed at non-commercial farming and funded at the expense of the farmers – like the milk suppliers – who are already seeing their incomes falling by massive double-digits year-on-year.

“It’s actually impossible to exaggerate the shambles that the Government has made of what was, until recently, Irish agri’s ‘flagship’ sector – the one area in which Ireland was deemed ‘world-beating’ and the economic engine of rural Ireland,” said the Dunbell farmer.

To illustrate his point, Mr Drennan cited the Teagasc figures that calculate the income of a single labour unit at €34,567 (the €49,432 figure is based on 1.43 labour units) and he noted that at that rate farmers were working well below the minimum hourly rate. “The average dairy farmer works at least a 60-hour week, at €34,567 they are coming out with about €11 per hour before they meet debt repayments. The Irish Government and the civil servants responsible for the state of the dairy sector should be ashamed to show their faces in public on the basis of those figures,” continued Mr Drennan.

The ICMSA President said that the pretence that nothing could be done about the farm income situation and that it was just ‘market forces’ at play was to add insult to injury. “We do not accept that there’s nothing that can be done; at the very least the Irish Government could stop introducing policies that cost farmers money and take their regulatory ‘foot’ off the necks of these farmers. The average dairy farmer has debt of €136,171, much – if not most – of which can be tracked back directly to Government action whether on stocking rates, slurry storage, inaction on excessive inputs costs and diseases, or wholly inadequate direct supports.
“They should be ashamed of those figures and determined to turn them around.”