Proposals from the European Commission to reform the Common Agricultural Policy are discriminatory against Ireland and a serious threat to its national interest, the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, has told fellow EU ministers.
In the first formal response of farm ministers to the detailed Agenda 2000 proposals, the Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, found few friends for his package of cuts in intervention prices.
Although ministers broadly support the case for price reductions in the direction of world market levels, most argue that the Commission is moving too far, too fast, and failing to compensate farmers adequately.
Mr Tom Parlon, president of the Irish Farmers' Association, said he was greatly heartened by the stance taken by Mr Walsh. Some 40 IFA members joined hundreds of protesters from Germany, France and Italy outside the Council building yesterday.
Mr Walsh told colleagues the proposals were particularly damaging to Ireland because beef and dairy produce constituted 71 per cent of Irish agricultural output, a contribution that far exceeded the relative position of the farming sector in any other EU state.
Although he had originally accepted the broad thrust of Agenda 2000, with reservations about the level of compensation to farmers for price cuts, he said the detailed proposals contained dramatically new and damaging ingredients, "overwhelmingly negative for Ireland", and thus no longer constituted a reasonable basis for negotiation.
The Irish case is based on the failure of the Commission to provide full compensation in the form of direct income payments for the cuts in prices. He said it would result in losses to individual beef farmers of £1,000 a head.
Mr Walsh argued that the effect of changing the method of calculating the payments designed to encourage more extensive farming was to completely negate extra premium payments in Ireland's case.
Grass-based extensive production, making use of Ireland's natural advantages, was also undermined by the continuation of the maize silage subsidies to the intensive producers in other countries, a spokesman for the Department said.
He rejected claims by the Commission that actual prices would not fall as far as the intervention price cuts, arguing that the beef market was far more responsive to such changes and quite likely to "go into free-fall".
Criticising the division of the 2 per cent increase in the milk quota, Mr Walsh cited an undertaking made by the Council of Ministers when the milk quota system was first introduced: "When distributing quantities added to the reserve, priority will be give to Ireland". "It is difficult to understand," he said, "how the Commission can bring forward a proposal that runs directly counter to a solemn commitment of the Council".
The IFA puts the reduction in Irish farm output resulting from the full package at £650 million and cuts in farm incomes at £250 million.
