Mar 16, 2010

ICMSA tells Department that a real successor to REPS is still possible 

Speaking following a meeting with senior officials of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, John Comer, Deputy President and Chairperson of ICMSA's Farm Services and Environment Committee said that the new REPS scheme being proposed by the Department will simply be impractical for most farmers and it will be next to impossible for mainstream, active, farmers to generate the much touted €5,000 from the scheme.

Mr. Comer said that ICMSA is profoundly disappointed that the Department has decided not to recognise the massive contribution to environmental improvement made by those farmers who participated in previous REPS schemes as far back as 1994. ICMSA has proposed that recognition must be given to this fact and could have been achieved through a basic payment on a 'whole farm' approach that would recognise the ongoing income loss being suffered by farmers as a result of reducing output under previous REPS schemes. 

Mr Comer said that, as presently constituted, the new scheme will be totally impractical and unviable for the vast majority of active farmers and that accordingly the enormous environmental improvements that resulted from the REPS series must now slow or cease. What was more disappointing, he said, was that it was still possible to design a real successor to REPS that would continue the huge amount of work already completed and safeguard the environmental consciousness that REPS had brought to rural Ireland .

"REPS has made a massive contribution to environmental improvement as well as huge contribution to the rural economy and the Minister should – even at this late stage - make changes so that farmers will have a meaningful REPS scheme.  That must entail a basic payment on a whole farm approach and an expansion of the number of options available so that the scheme becomes a real alternative for more farmers", stated Mr. Comer, who concluded by calling on the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to intervene and introduce a meaningful REPS scheme for farmers. 

Ends.      16 March 2010

John Comer, 087-2057846

Deputy President, ICMSA

Or

Cathal MacCarthy, 087-6168758 or 061-314677

ICMSA Press Office

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