“Any cut to the CAP budget is unacceptable,” Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) deputy president Alice Doyle told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs on Wednesday evening.

"Priority must be towards securing an adequate ring-fenced CAP budget," she added.

Doyle described potential funding sources outside the €293.7bn ring-fenced for CAP income supports as “hypothetical supports until guaranteed”.

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Doyle described the Commission’s "10% rural target" and "€45bn frontloaded" as being in a similar bracket in the absence of legal text.

“The farmers’ voice is being diluted,” she told TDs and senators.

“Most severely, in the context of an increasing overall multi-annual financial framework (MFF) budget, EU agriculture risks a 20% cut in funding, at a time when the challenges facing Irish agriculture both persist and are escalating.”

Mercosur

MEP Barry Andrews was also present and used the occasion to highlight his difference of opinion with the IFA on Mercosur.

The Fianna Fáil MEP voted against the motion in the European Parliament that referred the trade agreement’s legal text to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

He compared the IFA’s concerns relating to 99,000t of low-tariff South American beef coming into the EU with the CETA trade deal with Canada.

The IFA had expressed opposition to CETA previously, but that Irish beef exports to Canada had increased by 700% since the deal was ratified.

IFA director of European affairs Liam MacHale replied that the IFA concerns were valid at the time, in the wake of Brexit.

While beef exports to Canada had increased, “that was from a very low base” he added.

CAP

On CAP, Barry Andrews highlighted that he - and indeed all his Irish colleagues in the European Parliament - will be aligned in support of a better CAP outcome.

“All 14 MEPs will support on CAP, I think that goes without saying,” he said.

“There will be difficult details toward the end of the process, towards December maybe. You can be assured of full support for Irish farming and maintaining maximum payments under the CAP.”

While CAP was the main focus, a wide range of issues were highlighted by committee members. These included Mercosur being highlighted by Sinn Féin TDs Rúairí Ó Murchú - “100,000t of beef, 140,000t of poultry, hormones, antibiotics, what have you” - and Seán Crowe, who spoke against the provisional application of Mercosur in advance of the ECJ ruling.

Stand-in chair Fiona O’Loughlin spoke of unfair practices in the food chain.

Senator Eileen Lynch stressed the need for generational renewal to be a focus of the next CAP, with Alice Doyle replying “food security can only be protected if farmers are able to supply the food.

"Supporting productive farmers on the ground is inter-generational, you don’t get rid of existing farmers and then suddenly reinvent them.”