After leaving a number of sheep farmers sitting in the cold outside
his Department of Agriculture offices in Dublin for the past fortnight, the Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith has finally decided to meet them today to discuss their differences.
So today will be a crunch day for Irish sheep farmers who are not happy because the minister has remained silent since he more or less promised last September that helping the sheep sector would be his priority. He had indicated that he would be providing the unused CAP funds which he has at his disposal.
Henry Burns Chairman of the IFA Sheep Committee and one of the farmers who has been sitting outside the Department for most of the past two weeks told the Kilkenny Advertiser/ Carlow First on Monday that he was very disappointed that the minister has remained silent for so long. "However, he has decided to meet us when he could have done so ages ago. He is well aware that we sheep farmers have a problem, and if we do not receive a real commitment of monetary help from the government as soon as possible then the future of Irish sheep production will be in doubt," he exclaimed.
The IFA chairman reckons that while progress has been very slow there appears to be a slight softening of attitude by the government. “At first they said that they would not meet us until December 16 but now they have brought that meeting forward to this Thursday. We are very hopeful that eventually there will be a satisfactory resolution to the dispute particularly when Minister Smith said last September that the unused funds would go to the sheep farmer.
“All we want him to do at this stage is to revert to his initial statement when he basically said that he was going to go after the unused CAP funds and that he was going to isolate this money for the sheep producer."
Henry Burns also made the point that Minister Brendan Smith was and still is well aware that the sheep sector is ailing, "but we are worried now that he appears to have dropped the words sheep producers from his vocabulary. That has really upset us sheep farmers." he remarked.
On the question of whether the sheep farmers made the correct decision to hold a few sheep in a pen outside the Department of Agriculture Henry said that he was guided by the sheep farmers who with me made this decision." I think that it was the correct one. However, I also want to say that we are not trying to back the minister into a corner. We believe that he is a good minister but he needs to refocus and go along with Liam Aylward’s excellent report on the sheep sector.
“There is no need for the finer details at this stage. They can be worked out at a later stage, but the situation has just got to be sorted out now. If it does not happen then sheep production in Ireland as we know it today will be all over. It is as simple as that." he concluded.
