This year’s budget is the “last chance saloon” for the ‘forgotten farmers’ who lost out on key payments due to the recession, Macra has said.

Macra president Elaine Houlihan said support for the forgotten farmers is included in the Programme for Government and Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue has made commitments to deliver on this.

“I call on the Minister to give his full support and honour his commitment by putting in place the necessary funding in Budget 2025.

“A proposal to support forgotten farmers is part of Macra’s 2025 pre-budget submission and for the last decade or more, Macra has been actively involved in discussion[s] and has made countless submissions in relation to the forgotten farmers,” she said.

Every effort must be made to accommodate the forgotten farmers through the provision of a scheme that is rolled out before the end of 2024, Houlihan added.

Forgotten farmer

Forgotten farmer is a term used to describe young farmers who lost out following the removal of young farmer supports (installation aid) due to cuts in public expenditure during the last recession.

They were then unable to qualify for young farmer supports introduced under CAP 2015 because, in many cases, they had been farming for five years or more.

There have been many calls in recent years for a scheme to compensate these farmers.