IFA aims to wipe out costs of the meat dispute by end of the year

With income of £5.1 million (€6.5 million) and expenditure of £4.8 million last year, a network of 17 offices in three countries and a total staff of between 50 and 60, the Irish Farmers Association is a medium-sized business.

Its vast rural network and its major successes in lobbying government and industry make it an even bigger player on the Irish political and business stage.

Scares about the IFA going into debt for the first time in 20 years as a result of fines and legal costs arising from its blockade of the meat factories earlier this year are bunkum: the State's largest farming organisation has plans to wipe out the costs involved by the end of this year - and anyway, it has reserves of some £8.8 million in blue-chip investments to keep it going.

Not that the IFA was always so comfortably off. In the late 1970s the association was in debt to the tune of £680,000, a rather daunting sum at that time when annual income was running at between £400,000 and £450,000.

A concerted effort was made to tidy up the European Involvement Fund levies introduced a few years earlier. There was some resistance when the levies came in, but few farmers apply to have them returned. The levies generally are collected at the rate of £1 on £1,000 or .01 per cent on sales. In the 1980s, membership fees went on direct debit.

Before this happened there was an intensive consultation exercise, with each member canvassed individually. This year's blockade and the court fines - the largest fine imposed was £100,000 a day, although £500,000 was threatened - led to the resignation of the IFA president and most of the 70-strong national executive . . . temporarily.

The total cost of this campaign to secure higher cattle prices was £726,173, not including the costs awarded against the association to the meat factories. However, nobody expects the factories will ever claim those costs.

This debt will almost disappear when a special £8 once-off charge is added to the direct debit membership fee of £40 paid by the 75,000-plus members this year. Given that direct debits are rarely cancelled, that windfall income could well be replicated over the coming two or three years.

The IFA made a brief disclosure of its financial situation earlier this month, and brief it certainly was.

But the more detailed draft accounts, circulated to the 70 national executive members, make for much more interesting reading.

In 1999/2000, the IFA received £2,683,300 in gross affiliation fees - some £1.7 million was in direct debit payments.

The association's European Involvement Fund, which pays for the association's Brussels office and all travel and accommodation to and from Europe, netted the association £2,369,734.

This money came in bulk from levies on cattle sent to marts, meat factories and exported live; on bacon factories and sheep slaughtered; on grain supplied, liquid milk, horticulture produce, sugar beet, salmon growers, potato growers and forestry.

Levies are collected by the processors and exporters. Not everyone levied wants to contribute and after those farmers had applied for refunds, the net contribution was £2,344,711.

It doesn't end there. An Bord Glas, the vegetable promotions board, contributed £30,000 last year. The FBD Trust, which controls the FBD Insurance Company, gave £255,000 and Agri Trust, which controls the Farm- ers Journal, gave £50,000. Deposit interest totalled £46,691 and investment income £5,506.

Income from sponsorship, where the IFA might be involved in a promotion or competition with a bank or major agri-business amounted to £145,000 and there is a miscellaneous sum of £61,644.

Total audited income for 1998/ 1999 differs little - it was £5,136,745 - and there are really only two areas in which there was any appreciable difference. Gross affiliation fees were £2,590,695 in the previous year and the contribution from the Agri-Trust was three times as much as in the year under review, at £150,000.

Of the £4,828,458 the IFA spent in 1999/2000, the largest single amount went on staff costs - £2,207,784. This compares with £2,083,988 in the 1998/ 1999 audited accounts.

Next in size were "voluntary expenses" - £720,043. These are the expenses incurred by the voluntary officers of the IFA for travel, accommodation and subsistence both within Ireland and abroad. The voluntary officers include the president, Mr Tom Parlon, the deputy president, Mr John Dillon, the four regional vice-presidents, the chairpersons of the commodity and other sectoral committees and probably some of the members of the national committees.

Given that a number of these voluntary officers are working almost full-time here and very regularly in Brussels and at other key EU meetings, it does not appear a disproportionate outlay. The cost of premises - which include the headquarters at the Farm Centre in Bluebell, Dublin, the Brussels office and 15 regional offices around the Republic - came to £164,707. Separately, the running of the two-person Brussels office cost £248,564. Foreign travel, much of which would be within Europe, came to £107,087.

Communications and public relations cost the association £610,284, with the bulk, £433,601, going on communications. Small wonder the lobbying and publicity are so effective. Research/testing cost £58,368 last year, compared with £36,101 the previous year. But the cost of PR fell from £208,398 to £176,683 over the previous year.

Professional fees (£34,223), affiliation fees (£106,317) and financial charges at £157,418 are included in the draft accounts.

A great deal of money is spent on securing the association's membership. Membership recruitment costs were £164,128 and membership promotion was a whopping £236,460 (see membership panel). Indeed, this accounted for one of the largest percentage increase in expenditure over the previous year - a total of £400,588 compared with £347,520 in 1998/1999. The IFA declined to discuss its accounts further than the information given last week and both Mr Parlon and the general secretary, Mr Michael Berkery, were not available to comment as they were out of the State on business this week.