IFA president Padraig Walsh has received categorical assurances that the Single Farm Payment will not be touched irrespective of what happens during the WTO talks.
Mr Walsh had a meeting with the EU Agricultural Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel last week and following this meeting he said that "the commissioner's statement put an end to the nonsense of the Agriculture Minister Brendan Smith, who had been alleging that he was saving the Single Farm Payment in the Geneva negotiations."
He welcomed the commissioner's cast-iron commitment on the Single Farm Payment, saying that he reckoned that "the real challenge now for Minister Smith was the tariff concessions being offered by Peter Mandelson that would decimate the Irish beef industry."
While referring to the proposed concessions, Mr Walsh is convinced that a "beef price of 70 cents a lb wouldn't remotely cover the cost of production and our national suckler herd of one million cows would be wiped out.
"I would also have to say that there would be no future for dairy farming in Ireland if the price of milk that the farmer would be receiving would only be 24 cents per litre."
He also believes that the Irish sheep industry, which has been struggling with low prices for the past 10 years, would be wiped out with increased imports from New Zealand.
"As I have said many times before, the proposed concessions would cost the Irish economy €4 billion a year and 50,000 farmers would be put out of business.
"It is also a well known fact that a similar number of jobs would be lost in the Irish food industry,” he concluded
