Budget a ‘complete non-event’ for farmers, say ICMSA
THE INITIAL response of farmers to Budget 2024 is one of confusion and disappointment, said ICMSA president, Pat McCormack.
He described it as a “complete non-event”.
He said: “There’s nothing here that shows the Government even understands the scale of problems – still less want to solve them. All we seem to have got is a rollover of existing reliefs with some minor technical adjustments,” said Mr McCormack.
While noting that more announcements will be made later in the week, the ICMSA president said that the Government had “again” completely failed to recognise both the income and regulatory pressures on sole trader farmers.
“This Budget – like so many of its immediate predecessors – was content to point at alleged agri-environmental problems while shying away from the kind of on-farm funding that would deal with them,” said Mr McCormack.
The perfect example of this, according to the ICMSA president, was the “absolute vacuum” around the consequences of the recent nitrates decision to reduce to 220kgs of N that will, “beyond any dispute, wipe out many small and medium-sized dairy farmers”.
Mr McCormack said “that neglect on the part of the State had been compounded by the ‘guilty silence’ around any useful funding for expanded slurry storage on dairy farms”.
He stated: “Instead, we had been given some fanciful and missing-the-point tinkering towards providing grant aid for slurry storage to tillage farmers.
“The Budget could be summarised as what the Americans call ‘a nothing burger’ - there is nothing in it and certainly nothing in it for Irish farmers except a few pro forma relief rollovers,” said Mr McCormack.