Transparency and suckler farming were the hot topics at the IFA hustings in Castlebar, Co Mayo, on Tuesday 5 November. Deputy presidential candidates Thomas Cooney and Brian Rushe were the first to address the room.

Cavanman Cooney, a dairy and beef farmer and the IFA’s current environment chair, said he would like to see new grading machines installed in factories to ensure that fair and accurate images could be properly assessed.

Rushe called for a “proper competition authority” and said that the current authority was there to protect the primary producer, but on the other hand was trying to give consumers the lowest possible prices. The Kildare and West Wicklow chair called for the authority to be split as it cannot deliver both and branded it an “irrelevant organisation”.

The three presidential candidates faced a tougher grilling from the Mayo farmers who wanted a more in-depth answer to the transparency issues for beef, factories and how IFA meetings are handled.

Live-streaming IFA meetings

Current IFA livestock chair Angus Woods, in agreement with Rushe, told farmers that live-streaming of meetings and making the minutes available to the members would be one of the many ways that the IFA could move forward with its members.

Corkman John Coughlan, who is the IFA’s current inputs project manager, suggested that moving meetings to earlier times might attract younger farmers who have families, and said he would like to see more engagement with Macra na Feirme.

Farmer Declan Joyce, from Foxford, addressing candidates from the floor, was critical of the Green Cert: “How can you join farming after 40 years of age?” he asked.

Coughlan agreed that the conditions are currently too restrictive. “The real difficulty is in the entitlements,” he said. “We need a restructuring scheme for entitlements.” He added that the right mechanisms must be found to get more people into farming.

Cullinan suggested looking into an early retirement scheme and said the Green Cert should “definitely be looked at”.

All three candidates were in agreement when it came to carbon credits and CAP reform. Each said they wanted pasture and hedgerows counted towards carbon credits.

Cullinan said: “We need to bring back something like REPS - a straightforward scheme.”

Beef labelling

Farmer Eamon Rowley from Knock asked the candidates about alleged Irish labelling on imported Polish beef, to which Woods simply answered: “Born, reared and slaughtered in Ireland is fine - anything else is illegal."

Cullinan asked the farmer if he had proof that that Polish beef was being labelled as Irish that could be acted upon.

EU beef labelling legislation dictates that labels must show where the animal was born, where it was reared and where it was slaughtered. If all three of these stages happened in the same EU member state, then the beef in the pack can carry the national identity of that country.

Future for sucklers

Many farmers asked about the future of suckler farming and the response was one that has been reiterated many times in recent months: the candidates will do everything they can to ensure the survival of the beef industry.

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