ICSA president Sean McNamara has described as outrageous the fact that farmers will be paid on just 31 calves under the National Dairy Beef Weighing Scheme (NDBWS), instead of the 50 they were led to expect.

"The €4 million allocated to the scheme would have paid for 200,000 calves. However, after more than 305,000 calves were weighed by the 1 November deadline, farmers are being told that up to 40% of their work will go unpaid after the Department slashed the number of calves farmers will be paid on. They will now receive a payment for a maximum of 31 calves instead of 50. That is completely unacceptable," he said.

Mr McNamara said ICSA is calling on Minister Heydon to immediately increase the budget so that all calves weighed and submitted by the deadline are paid in full.

He said what is even more concerning is the fact that this cut comes on top of cuts to both the Beef and Sheep Welfare Schemes. Payment rates for 2025 are being cut from €75/calf to €67/calf in the Beef Welfare Scheme, and from €13/ewe to €11.50/ewe in the Sheep Welfare Scheme, again because those schemes were oversubscribed.

"Oversubscription should be treated as a success, not an excuse to slash payments. If more farmers sign up, then the Department should have contingency funds in place to ensure full payment. Otherwise, farmers will rightly lose faith. It is ridiculous to expect farmers to budget on a scheme only to get hit with a payment 40% lower than expected. We cannot have a situation where the more farmers engage, the more the Department cuts."

Concluding, Mr McNamara said, "All scheme payment rates should be moving up, not down, especially when costs are rising and inflation continues to be a big factor. Repeated short-changing leaves a bad taste and breeds disillusionment amongst farmers trying to do their best. This cannot continue."