ICMSA say proposed Commission on Generational Renewal in Farming “an exercise in futility”

 Commenting on the announcement of a Commission on Generational Renewal in Farming, the President of ICMSA, Denis Drennan, said that the Government’s inability or unwillingness to accept that the difficulties in getting young people to commit to farming was directly linked to collapsing farm incomes and ever-increasing regulatory pressures meant that any such Commission was “an exercise in futility”.

Mr. Drennan said that unless and until Minister McConalogue and the Government moved past this kind of wilful self-delusion and accepted that young people would judge a career in farming and primary food-production on the same basis as any other career option than we would remain stuck in this cycle of meaningless answers to meaningless questions.

“There’s something very dispiriting and discouraging about the Irish Government pretending that there’s something mysterious or unknown about the failure to get new generations into farming. Of course, they (the Irish Government) have a right to pretend that the genuinely don’t know the reason; but the rest of us – and certainly the farmers – could save the Government a lot of time and the expense involved in yet another Commission. The reason why the children of farm families don’t want to follow their parents into farming is because those kids see the hours and years of hard work and stress and official indifference and calculate very quickly that there are easier and better paid careers in almost any other sector. That’s the reason and there’s no mystery – or at least there isn’t outside Government Departments. The Irish Government seems to think that it’s the duty of another generation of farm families to put up with the indifference and casual incompetence that was handed out to older generations of farmers. But those young generations have much more options than we had – and they’re exercising them. If they’re the children of a dairy family, they don’t see why they should have to work a 60-hour week for roughly half the minimum official hourly wage, so they’re not going to do it”, said Mr. Drennan.

Mr. Drennan said that “a perfect example” of the Government’s capacity for self-delusion was provided by their management and oversight of ‘flagship’ environmental schemes.

“A young farmer now is looking at an average ACRES payment of around €6000 per annum. That young man or woman will remember their parents getting £5000 per annum 35 years ago. The Government can pretend about supporting farm generational renewal, but that’s all it is: a pretence. Real support would mean raising the scheme payments in line with inflation and costs. It would mean increasing the scheme payments for farmers in the same way as the politicians and civil servants do for their own salaries and pensions”, he said.    

The ICMSA President said that for the first time in his experience, he was hearing of parents actively dissuading their children from taking over farms that had been in the family for generations.

“We are regularly encountering situations now where the parents are asking their children to think ‘long and hard’ about following them into farming – even where the children have expressed a desire to do so. The parents are actively dissuading their children from following them into fulltime farming because all they see is falling and uncertain incomes, Governmental indifference and regulatory stress. Those are the facts of the matter and if Minister McConalogue feels the need to establish a Commission to tell him something as screamingly self-evident as that, then it only underlines that sense of disconnect and unreality that is the context for the failure on generational renewal”, said Mr. Drennan.

Ends          12 August 2024

Denis Drennan, 086-8389401

President, ICMSA.

Or

Cathal MacCarthy, 087-6168758

ICMSA Press Office