Dairy quotas, a topic that the Irish Farmers’ Association brought up earlier this year, is under consideration by the Government. In the IFA’s call for this not to be a consideration, the plea against it appeared to have gone unnoticed. In stating that there was no legal basis for the quota models placed forward, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, the IFA says it will not accept the imposition of a quota of any kind on any sector.
IFA president Tim Cullinan says “what the department has put forward has no legal basis. IFA will challenge any attempt by the government to impose a quota on our sector.”
Cullinan highlighted that “the previous quota system was an EU-wide regime. Any attempt to impose a quota in Ireland would not be consistent with the principle of the Common EU market.”
According to the IFA president, a proposal for quotas is “completely at odds” with publicly-made comments by Prof. Gerry Boyle, the chairperson of the Food Vision Dairy Group.
Remaining firm with the IFA’s stance on the matter Cullinan says that “the minister must now come clean and outline when the department’s modelling was done and when they arrived at their preferred option of a quota on the volume of milk produced.”
LSL News.