Sir, - As I listen to the bewildering reports of the current CAP reform discussions in Brussels, I fear greatly that our negotiators have totally missed the point and I feel compelled to draw the following analogy.
Imagine a house built with absolutely no foundations. Then imagine a situation where the builder, the engineer and the architect of this house are called to a meeting where they are charged with sorting out the problems which result. If these people were then to start a long debate on the type of wallpaper which should be used to paper over the defects, their efforts would be greeted with howls of scorn and derision.
I am convinced this is exactly what is now happening at the EU farm talks.
The present EU "Special Beef Premium" payments which are supposed to compensate farmers for the current drop in beef prices and around which much of the present negotiations are based are, like the house, built with no foundations, totally flawed. These payments, notwithstanding their name, actually do nothing to help beef farmers. Sadly, as well as destroying our beef finishing sector, this EU system also has to its credit the virtual extinction of the small dairy farmer, as well as being the main reason for the very serious overstocking and fodder crisis in the west of Ireland.
The vain attempts being made in Brussels to make this harmful and unjust system work are, like the wallpaper, little more than a sick joke to Irish drystock farmers who, having suffered price cut after price cut, watch as their beef support money is redirected to other much more affluent sectors of farming and they themselves are forced out of business.
It has now become generally accepted that at the next CAP negotiations in 2006 an acreage-based payment system will be introduced. This much simpler system will eliminate the obvious injustices and obscenely wasteful administration cost of the present system. It can be fashioned to focus EU funds where they are most needed, on the smaller and more disadvantaged farms, thus retaining more people on the farms of rural Ireland. Comments by the former agriculture minister, Mr Ivan Yates, on RTE' Questions & Answers confirm this assumption.
It will be obviously far too late for very many of our farmers in seven years' time. So why wait? Why not now? Perhaps our Agriculture Minister, and the leaders of our main farm organisation, the IFA, would like to explain.
Is what we are witnessing (a) just plain simple-minded stupidity? Or (b) a very cruel but efficient way to reduce farm numbers? Or (c) vested interests at work? The present system greatly benefits a small but affluent and influential minority.
The future of rural Ireland is critically dependant on the outcome of the present talks. I think we deserve some explanations, but we need them quickly. - Yours, etc., John Heney,
Kilfeacle, Tipperary.