Oct 19th, 2009

Irish farmers represented at Luxembourg as another mass protest marks Farm Council meeting

Today’s Farm Council meeting in Luxembourg convened to consider the dairy crisis has once again witnessed a huge number of dairy farmers attending to protest. The protesters are members of the European Milk Board (EMB) of which the Irish constituent organisation is ICMSA.

Jackie Cahill, President of ICMSA, is attending the demonstration and representing Ireland at EMB meetings in Luxembourg today as well as meeting with Minister Brendan Smith. The dairy crisis has taken a new twist following last week’s report from the European Court of Auditors which was scathingly critical of the Commission’s approach and stated that deregulation would be disastrous for the EU dairy sector and particularly dairy farmer incomes. Mr Cahill described the decision made in Luxembourg this morning to allocate €280 million across all European countries as no more than a token or ‘band aid’ approach. The ICMSA President pointed out that this amount of funding would be required for Ireland alone given huge losses Irish dairy farmers have incurred.

BACK TO 2009 ARCHIVES