THE IRISH Creamery Milk Suppliers Association has said EU money earmarked for the rural broadband programme should be diverted to dairy farmers, as their need is greatest.
ICMSA president, Jackie Cahill, said up to €30 million of new funding was likely to become available later this year from unused EU funds and it had been specifically earmarked for rural broadband and the dairy industry.
“But given the desperate pressure on dairy income it is clear where the priorities must rest for the distribution of this money. The need for rural broadband – desperate as that may be – is simply not as pressing as the need to support dairy incomes at present,” he said.
Mr Cahill said the German government had already earmarked this funding for dairy farmers who were facing an unprecedented crisis in their incomes.
Calling for a maximising of budgets where possible, he said, €17 million would become available from next year in so called “modulation” payments from the Common Agricultural Policy and it too should go to dairy farmers.
In addition, he said there would also be unused Irish Cap funding worth €24 million available next year. He said €7 million would go to sheep farmers and the rest should go to the diary sector.
The depth of the crisis in the sector was highlighted last week in a protest by 1,000 farmers who produce liquid milk all year round for domestic consumption – as opposed to milk produced for manufacturing purposes, generally only from April to November.
Pádraig Walshe, president of the Irish Farmers Association, said the liquid milk producers need an annual average price of at least 34c per litre to cover their costs. Mr Walshe said they were now being offered “insulting” prices as low as 24c per litre.
John Tyrrell, director general of ICOS, the umbrella group for Irish co-operatives, said no strengthening of the demand for dairy products was predicted this year and Irish processors had strongly supported farmer milk prices by paying significantly more than market returns.
“While co-ops try to shelter their members from market volatility, the cost of this support to the industry in 2008 was enormous and ICOS estimates that for butter production alone, the industry subsidised milk prices to the tune of over €120 million,” he said in the annual report for 2008.