Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue’s “kite-flying of a wholesale grain growing project was ill thought out and unhelpful”, says Sinn Féin agriculture spokesperson Matt Carthy TD.

Carthy claimed that when Minister McConalogue “finally met with farm leaders this week, he brought absolutely no proposals to the table”.

The Cavan–Monaghan TD made the comments as he criticised the Government for its failure to secure an “urgent rescue package for farmers” on Thursday.

He warned that the current challenges facing farmers in Ireland, in relation to both the price and availability of inputs, were being compounded by “a lack of policy coherence and resourcing”.

Alarm bells

Carthy said: “Farmers have been ringing the alarm bells on dramatically rising input costs for months, but their warnings have been falling on deaf ears within Government.

“What is required is leadership and urgent action. The Minister for Agriculture must support our farming families to feed consumers over the coming seasons.”

On the need to ensure food security, he criticised the Minister and the Department of Agriculture for bring forward “no proposals” on soil sampling, upskilling, increasing the number of farm advisers, labour, machinery or the “drying and storage capacity needed to deliver on a significantly increased harvest”.

Package

The opposition TD claimed that “at the outset of the invasion of Ukraine, Sinn Féin called on the European Commission to respond with a package for farmers negatively affected by sanctions on Russia”.

“Recent indications that the €500m European Crisis Reserve Fund may be deployed are to be welcomed. This crisis is being felt in every member state. Even if Ireland were to receive 20% of the entire fund, it would perhaps sustain our pig sector alone until Budget 2023,” he said.

Carthy insisted that the current “crisis” has exposed the “fundamental weakness of food security policy at both a European and domestic level”.

He said: “It has exposed the hollowing out of the Common Agricultural Policy, which in and of itself is clearly no longer capable of ensuring the availability of safe, high-quality, environmentally sustainable produce.

“Over the past number of decades, we have seen the proportion of the EU budget which the Common Agricultural Policy comprises reduce dramatically, from a high of 65.5% in 1980, to just 30% in the current MFF, a position celebrated by our Government.”

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