1) ICSA Sheep chair Willie Shaw has hit out at meat factories for pulling sheep prices in the week before Christmas, despite sheep numbers being significantly tighter. “Sheep throughput this year is down by around 20% on last year, which amounts to a staggering 600,000 fewer sheep in the system. In any normal market, that level of tight supply should be lifting prices, not seeing them cut,” he said.

Continuing, Mr Shaw said, “If those 600,000 lambs were actually coming through the system, how low would prices have gone? Sheep farmers would have been completely cleaned out.” 

Mr Shaw said adding insult to injury is the fact that price cuts are happening at all given dwindling supplies. “Processors continue to perform economic gymnastics that fly in the face of basic supply and demand logic. There is no transparency and no accountability in how these prices are set, yet farmers are always the ones left carrying the cost,” he said.

He said the timing of the cuts, coming just before Christmas, sends the worst possible signal to sheep farmers already under severe pressure, particularly those trying to build a future in the sector. “There is constant talk about generational renewal, but it’s hard to see how young people are expected to stay in sheep farming when prices can be cut at critical times of the year. If they can’t see a fair return for their work, they simply won’t stay. It really is that straightforward.”

2) ICSA president Sean McNamara has said many farmers will be angry, though not surprised, by comments from the Taoiseach Micheál Martin linking Ireland’s position on Mercosur with the EU decision on the Nitrates derogation. “The Taoiseach’s comments confirm fears that the Government’s overriding priority in Brussels has been securing the Nitrates derogation while other big issues like Mercosur have been treated as bargaining chips,” he said.

“For months, our warnings about Mercosur have been fobbed off with standard reassurances that Ireland would not support the deal in its current form and that the Programme for Government commits to working with like-minded countries to oppose it. Farmers will now suspect that while empty words were spoken at home, a different story was happening behind closed doors in Brussels.”

“Securing the derogation showed what can be achieved when everyone works together. But delivering for one sector cannot come at the expense of another. Now it looks like the Taoiseach is saying beef farmers might have to pay the price for the derogation, and that is completely unacceptable.”

“These are two separate issues. Mercosur is a long-term threat to Irish beef and suckler farmers, while the derogation is a short-term concession for a small number of farmers. In addition, the safeguards the Taoiseach mentions are a sham and will not protect Irish producers from the impact of Mercosur. Expecting farmers to believe otherwise seriously underestimates the level of anger and mistrust out there,” he said.

Mr McNamara said the Taoiseach must make Ireland’s position clear and rule out any trade-off between the derogation and Mercosur. “Our beef farmers are not bargaining chips. The derogation may be gone in three years, but the effects of Mercosur will be felt for decades. Farmers will not forget a betrayal like this.”