Consultations must start on beef Brexit payout - ICSA

ICSA beef chairman Edmund Graham has said that it is now vital that Minister Michael Creed engages in consultation with farm organisations on the means of distributing the €100 million Brexit package with a view to ensuring the money is with farmers as soon as possible.

 

“ICSA has welcomed the announcement which follows on from extensive ICSA lobbying which kicked into gear at the ICSA AGM in January. ICSA had a detailed discussion with senior members of Commissioner Hogan’s cabinet in February in Brussels where ICSA zoned in on the need for a package regardless of whether it was a no-deal Brexit or not.”

 

“A Brexit Support package for farmers was also a key component of ICSA’s submission on the Future of Beef in the Context of Foodwise 2025 which was submitted on March 20th. ICSA had analysed the price differential between cattle prices in 2015 and cattle prices in a 2019 post-Brexit world. This identified that Irish beef farmers were losing up to €4 million weekly due to Brexit related price cuts, and had been doing so since last autumn. ICSA had previously highlighted the devastation that Brexit was causing the beef sector when we were the first farm organisation to protest beef price cuts outside meat factories last October.”

 

“In April, ICSA met Commissioner Hogan in Brussels where we got the message across to the Commissioner that Brexit had already happened for beef farmers. At that meeting, the Commissioner accepted the ICSA argument and committed to doing his very best to get emergency funding agreed by EU Budget Commissioner Oetttinger. ICSA followed that up with a detailed meeting with Minister Creed in Dublin.”