IFA President Joe Healy has accused Agriculture Minister Michael of not listening to sheep farmers.
Mr. Healy said this is clear from the most recent announcement by Agriculture Minister Michael Creed on his decision to impose compulsory EID tagging on sheep.
“Sheep farmers are very annoyed with the Minister over his failure to support them in the fodder crisis and the way he allowed the factories impose additional operational costs on them under the clean lamb policy. The Minister is now piling additional costs on top of sheep farmers with EID”.
Mr. Healy said proposing a once-off subvention of €100 on tags completely underestimates the costs involved. He said both the IFA and the Department have calculated that EID will costs an additional €2m pa or up to €14m during the FoodWise programme.
He said: “The Minister needs to stop spending sheep farmers’ money and step up to the mark on the real costs of EID that he is imposing on the sector”.
IFA National Sheep Chairman Sean Dennehy said deferring the implementation date for EID to June 1st 2019 is a help as it could not go ahead from October 1st 2018 as originally announced by the Minister.
