Public asked to give views on new CAP agreement

The public is to be asked for its views on the implementation of the new agreement on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), it…

The public is to be asked for its views on the implementation of the new agreement on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), it emerged yesterday.

The Department of Agriculture and Food said it would be placing advertisements in the media seeking submissions on what has become known as "The Luxembourg Agreement".

This mid-term review of the Agenda 2000 agreement on the EU's agricultural policy will, according to Dr Franz Fischler, the EU Commissioner for Agriculture, change the face of European agriculture.

A Department of Agriculture spokesman said that the advertisements would be running later this month and submissions would be "welcomed from all sections of society".

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"I would expect that consumer groups, rural dwellers and a broad range of groups and individuals would want their views known on such an important issue," he said.

"We hope to have all the submissions by the end of August and by that time we will have had the full text of the agreement from Brussels," he said.

The spokesman said he saw nothing odd about asking the general public for its views on the implementation of the agreement because of the expected changes it will bring.

"A lot of people other than farmers are very concerned with the issues involved including decoupling and all the red tape that is involved in farming," he said.

The country's smallest farm organisation, the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers' Association (ICSA), which has supported one of the main pillars of the reform package, decoupling direct payments from production, will today lobby members of the Oireachtas to have the right to be included in discussions to implement the CAP.

The organisation is not a party to the Partnership Agreement which has become the vehicle which will be used by the main farming organisations, the IFA, ICMSA, ICOS and Macra na Feirme, to implement the new CAP agreement.

The president of the ICSA, Mr John Deegan, said last night that the consultation process should not discriminate in favour of social partners and ICSA had a right to be included in the talks.

"ICSA analysis has been consistent and much more visionary in relation to decoupling than any other farm organisation and, accordingly, ICSA has earned its right to be part of the negotiations on the detail of the final deal. It makes no sense to have other farm organisations negotiating long-standing ICSA policy without ICSA being there," concluded Mr Deegan.

The group will he holding a national executive committee meeting in Buswell's Hotel, Dublin, later today and will conduct a day-long lobby of Senators and TDs.

Yesterday, a spokesman for the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, rejected criticisms of him by the main farm organisations that he had brought nothing to the negotiating table in Luxembourg.

The spokesman said that Mr Walsh had secured the future of the CAP in the talks, protected the €1.6 billion annual payments from the EU to Irish farmers and would stand over his statement that the agreement was a satisfactory outcome to the negotiations.